Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships 2026

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) is delighted to announce that calls are now open for the Early Career Fellowships scheme from the Leverhulme Trust for 2026 entry.

The Faculty of Arts at the University of Warwick is running an internal selection process to identify candidates to put forward to the Leverhulme Trust.

Prospective applicants should therefore submit an Expression of Interest containing the following information to the Faculty of Arts Research Strategy, Funding and Contracts team artsprojsupport at warwick dot ac dot uk by the internal deadline of 5pm on Friday 21 November 2025:

A short description of their proposed project (maximum 2 A4 pages)
A copy of their CV (maximum 2 A4 pages)
The names of three referees. Please note that referees will not be asked to provide a statement at this stage

As part of their Expression of Interest, applicants may indicate interest in being hosted by a Department, School or Centre in the Faculty, such as the SMLC, or interest in working with a particular academic mentor, or interest in cross-departmental mentoring. However, applicants should note that the initial selection process will be led at Faculty level in order to identify the strongest overall candidates.

Eligibility criteria are as follows. Candidates must:

hold a doctoral degree by the time they take up the Fellowship. If currently registered for a doctorate, they must have submitted their thesis by 4pm on 19 February 2026
not yet have held a permanent academic appointment, although the Trust will consider applications from candidates with permanent posts that do not include any research
not have held or currently hold a comparable funded post-doctoral position of three years’ duration or longer to pursue their own research
not currently hold or have held postdoctoral positions to pursue their own independent research totalling 3 or more years
have submitted their doctoral thesis for viva voce examination no more than four years prior to the closing date. Those who submitted their thesis earlier than 19 February 2022 are not eligible to apply, unless they have since had a career break
either hold a degree from a UK higher education institution at the time of taking up the Fellowship or at the time of the application deadline hold a non-permanent academic position in the UK (e.g. fixed-term lectureship, fellowship) which commenced no less than 4 months prior to 19 February 2026.

The University will then support successful candidates in the development of full applications, the deadline for which is 19 February 2026. For any queries about the scheme or internal process, please contact Alan Ashton-Smith, Research Strategy and Development Manager for the Faculty of Arts Alan dot Ashton-Smith at warwick dot ac dot uk