Frequently Asked Questions

To be eligible to apply for a fellowship, a break from research of at least two years is required when you contact us.

• Non-research work taken up since you left research can be considered part of your career break depending on circumstances.

• More guidance is provided below, including whether research-related or retraining activities may be permitted during your career break, but please contact us if you are unsure.

To be eligible, you need to have been in a paid research position when your career break began.

The criteria are slightly different if your career break began while you were studying for a research doctorate as we appreciate that you may not have completed it by the time your stipend stopped and may have had to continue unpaid or take another non-research role to remain financially solvent. In this case, the start date of your career break would be taken as the date of your successful doctoral examination/viva.

However, if unpaid roles are prevalent in your field of research, then you may be eligible to apply as long as you have not continued to undertake voluntary and unpaid research during your career break. Please contact us if you are unsure.

Your career break must have been for family, caring or health reasons. If you have been on maternity leave or taken another form of statutory parental leave, the time can count towards your career break. However, to be eligible to apply for a fellowship your break must still be for at least two years when you contact us. If you had extended maternity leave for extenuating circumstances, for example, then do send us your details and we will determine whether you are eligible to apply.

If your career break from research was not a result of family, caring or health reasons (e.g. you made a career choice that you now wish to reconsider, or your research career had stalled) then you will not be eligible to apply.

No, you are not eligible to apply until you are resident in the UK with the appropriate visa that is valid for at least 12 months when you contact us.

Please contact us first if you wish to hold your fellowship at a research organisation in the Republic of Ireland.

• School teachers: If you have retrained and worked as a schoolteacher during your career break you may still be eligible for one of our fellowships, but you must have a first degree and ideally a research doctorate, or at least three years’ equivalent research experience with evidence of research outputs prior to your break from research. Normally, your career in teaching must not be longer in duration than your career in research.

• Lecturers in Further Education or Higher Education: If you have lectured to undergraduate degree level for no more than six hours a week you will still be eligible to apply for a fellowship if you fulfil the other criteria. If you are working as a full-time assistant professor teaching undergraduates, you are not eligible because this would be classed as a successful follow-on position from a fellowship.

If your new qualifications are related to the topic of the research that you would like to undertake with a fellowship, then you are not eligible to apply because you would have already begun to retrain. However, if your new qualification is completely unrelated to your research, then you may still be eligible. Please contact us to discuss.

If your research outputs were generated using data or materials obtained before the break in your research career, then you will still be eligible to apply for a fellowship as long as you comply with our other criteria. However, if the volume of your output is very high, your cv may still be competitive and your career break is not holding you back. If this is the case, you will need to indicate why you need a part-time retraining fellowship to resume your career.

If you have generated research outputs during your break from new data or materials, then you may not be eligible to apply because you would have already resumed your research activity. Please contact us to discuss.

We appreciate that applicants still need to be financially solvent when on a career break from research so as long as the paid role does not involve primary research, you may still be eligible. However, there does need to have been a career break from a paid research role taken for a family, health or caring reason rather than a change of career when a paid research role came to an end.

If you have established a successful, non-research career, then it may mean that a Daphne Jackson Fellowship is not suitable because you have been able to overcome any barriers resulting from your initial break. Plus, if you have been in your non-research career longer than your research career you may not be eligible. Please contact us to discuss.

We look for evidence that you had a successful research career before your break.

For research fellowships, you must have a first degree and a research doctorate, or at least three years’ equivalent research experience with evidence of research impact and outcomes. Incomplete doctoral studies do not contribute to three years of equivalent research experience.

• To enable consistency, we define a doctorate to be completed on the date of its successful examination/viva.

Qualification and experience requirements vary for Research Technical Professional Fellowships.

If you did any paid research during your career break, you will not be eligible for one of our fellowships.

If you did research on a voluntary and unpaid basis, it may affect your eligibility. We would encourage a small amount of voluntary work (for example, approximately 2 – 4 weeks) for you to see whether you want to commit to returning to research. If you work voluntarily as a researcher for longer periods of time, you may have done a large amount of retraining already, which would mean that you are not eligible for a fellowship as retraining is a core element of our scheme. This is exemplified if you have produced any primary research outputs during this work. Please contact us if you are unsure.

Projects on clinical research topics can be undertaken with a fellowship as long as all appropriate permissions have been obtained.

If you are a practising clinician or allied health professional who wants to resume your research activity, then please contact us to discuss your eligibility to apply as we will need to consider your current and previous circumstances and your plans. The Daphne Jackson Trust is unable to offer clinical salaries or fund service provision. NIHR may offer suitable, alternative forms of support.

In considering your eligibility and suitability to apply for a fellowship, we look for evidence of successful research activities prior to your break which indicate a reasonable prospect of you being able to return to research after your break. However, overall, our aim is that the fellowship will enable a step change from your circumstances during the career break from your research.

The fellowships enable you to refresh your training or retrain in a new area and will help you to overcome the barriers to returning to research after a break for family, health or caring reasons. Many of our fellows remain in research once their fellowship has finished whereas others will use their transferable skills to pursue related careers such as research support and beyond.

Please see Fellowship Impact and Outcomes – Daphne Jackson Trust

No, your plans do not have to be finalised when you contact us to consider whether or not you are eligible, but we do expect you to have formulated some ideas about what you want to work on, where and why.

If you want to undertake research in the arts or humanities, you should have secured the support of an appropriate supervisor and the corresponding department before applying. 

No, our research fellowships are awarded part-time and we strongly encourage flexible working patterns. 

The fellowships are normally awarded for three years at 0.5 FTE (full-time equivalent) depending on the funding arrangement. How you work your FTE is entirely between yourself and your supervisor, and we encourage you to be creative to fit around your other commitments and the nature of the project. For example, and if relevant, some fellows like to work more hours in school term time and fewer in the school holidays.

Research Technical Professional Fellowships are on a different basis.

While Daphne Jackson Fellowships were originally established for women who wanted to return to research careers in science, technology, engineering or maths only, we have subsequently extended eligibility to include people of all genders and from all research and technical disciplines, including the arts and humanities.

Yes, there is an element of competition. For fellowships that are advertised for support by a specific funder, the funder selects which candidate(s) goes through the application process. Therefore, you will be in competition with other applicants. For other individual fellowships, the Trust approaches potential funders that are relevant to the project. There will be some competition with other projects the funder is also considering.

The application process takes approximately a year, from the date you submit your forms to us so that we can determine your eligibility to apply for a fellowship to the start of the award.

Our fellowships are funded by external organisations such as UKRI, universities, medical research charities and learned societies – please visit ‘Funding’ for more information. We don’t provide funding ourselves but we do act as a facilitator between you and the funder.  Fellows are not expected to find their own funding.

Your host institution will be your employer for the duration of the fellowship and it will be responsible for all employment related matters, appropriate insurance and terms and conditions of work.

Each host organisation has a different pay scale, and you will be paid on a scale in relation to other researchers in the department or organisation. We recommend that Daphne Jackson Fellows are placed on the relevant pay scale of the HE framework agreement single pay spine for postdoctoral research assistants between spinal point 29 and spinal point 34) pro rata.

We do not provide clinical salaries.

Daphne Jackson Fellowships cover your salary and extraordinary expenses. Extraordinary expenses are specifically for retraining costs – these currently stand at £1500 per year and cover attendance and travel to Daphne Jackson training courses, conference registration and travel, learned society memberships, and other training courses, extraordinary childcare or tertiary caring costs.

While some fellowship funders provide money to contribute to the cost of the research project (e.g. consumables, costs of using facilities, equipment purchase, equipment hire, maintenance, computing hardware and software) these research expenses are normally met by your host organisation. These costs vary widely depending on your project but should be considered and agreed in principle during the application process.

Please contact us to discuss what you have in mind and your circumstances. However, in principle, we consider that building strong, in-person relationships with your supervisors, mentors and colleagues in your host institute are critical for a successful return to research after a career break

Please note that if funded, you cannot claim travel expenses to travel to your host institute, especially if you are working remotely. These costs would be expected to be covered by your salary.

Yes! Our goal is for you to return to your career, and if you don’t need one of our fellowships to do that, that’s great! However, please keep us informed of other avenues you might be pursuing as it means we might be able to help others. 

During their fellowship, all of our fellows are required to take part in at least three tailor-made courses organised by the Trust. These courses cover key skills that you will need in order to return to your career. Courses are also a great opportunity to meet and network with other fellows. You may also need to attend other training courses, and these are usually provided by the host.

Attendance at conferences is also encouraged during your fellowship. Conference participation often leads to contacts that help in securing a position afterwards. Many fellows use their extraordinary expenses to cover the cost of conference attendance.

We also organise an annual meeting or conference for our fellows.

Each fellow is given £1500 extraordinary expenses per year to pay for the costs associated with attending conferences or training courses. Costs could include conference registration, learned society membership or travel costs to training courses.

We appreciate that it is quite common for the partner of a Daphne Jackson Fellow to have an established career in a research field similar to the fellow. Despite this, our position is that it’s not appropriate for your partner – or other close family member – to be your supervisor or act as a personal referee for you due to potential conflicts of interest, even if you have worked together before. This is in line with the policy of many funders, UK universities and research institutes.  

The difference is in the route to making an application.

• “Regular” or rolling route – a potential applicant for a Daphne Jackson Research Fellowship approaches the Trust then, before or after the initial eligibility assessment, finds a host organisation, a supervisor, and develops a proposal for their fellowship. The Trust then finds suitable funding. The applicant cannot proceed with the final stages of the application process until funding is in place. Please note that funding is not guaranteed.

• Advertised route – an organisation agrees to fund/half fund a fellowship, then we advertise this opportunity with a particular deadline (and potentially in a specific area of research or geographical location) and see how many applicants come forward.  After an initial sift by us to ensure the Daphne Jackson Trust eligibility criteria are met, the funding organisation(s) is involved in the selection of the applicant.  This can be by face-to-face interviews or simply by assessing the CVs and personal statements from the applicants.  Once a suitable applicant(s) has been identified, they will then progress with the fellowship application process in the normal way.  For half funded arrangements, the Trust will find suitable matching funding.

No, this is not within our remit.

No, the Awards Assessment Panel’s decision is final, and we do not have an appeals process.