Application to the Fellowship
Leverhulme ECF is a prestigious scheme designed to assist those at a relatively early stage of their academic careers with the hope that the appointment would lead to a more permanent position in higher education. The scheme requires salary co-funding from the host institution, which is why LSE conducts an internal sift annually. For the 2022 call round, central School funding support was secured for a total of six fellowships.
Annalena Oppel is an LSE Fellow at the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Associate at the International Inequalities Institute. Her research focuses on economic inequality and trend patterns, as well as justifications of inequality and the politics of social protection in contexts of the global South. Prior to joining LSE, she has been a Research Associate at UNU WIDER, a Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard University and a Junior Consultant for the German Development Cooperation and the OECD.
As Annalena’s initial attempt at the ECF had been unsuccessful while she was still based at UNU WIDER, LSE’s Research Development Team provided support for her repeated attempt at securing the Fellowship.
Tailored Advice by LSE Research Support
The Research Development Team’s tailored feedback and advice was instrumental in helping Annalena win the Fellowship. In addition to supporting Annalena in preparing her application for submission to The Leverhulme Trust, the team also supported the Research Development Panel (RDP), which conducts internal demand management, with designing and implementing the internal sift. In this way – by working with both RDP and emerging academics interested in the Fellowship, at the internal sift and final proposal preparation stages – the team contributes to strategically supporting and developing LSE's early career researchers.
“On revisions, I was very fortunate to have an engaged academic mentor and support from the Research Development Team, who provided me with feedback on multiple versions of the research proposal concerning content and structure. I never counted how many there were in the end – but it was definitely more than I expected when starting the application.”
– Dr Annalena Oppel
The Next Steps
Annalena’s Leverhulme ECF will focus on the ways in which people explain their success and failure and how this might impact redistributive preferences in South Africa. She is currently wrapping up ongoing research projects, as well as launching a new survey experiment in South Africa – both being very close to the Leverhulme research. These activities, according to the researcher, are very helpful in developing the research idea further.
In terms of the work by LSE Research Support, the Research Development Team will next be handing Annalena’s award to the Research Awards Team for implementation.
More information on Annalena’s experience can be found in the July 2022 edition of Research Briefing.
If you are interested in exploring how LSE Research Support can help you with your research idea, please get in touch with us via research.innovation@lse.ac.uk.