Writing proposals is the perfect opportunity to develop our thinking. By its very nature, a proposal demands that we justify why we want to do something and how we can bring the work to a successful conclusion. It requires that we think widely enough to make our work interesting, or even exciting, but at the same time we must be able to make reasoned predictions about the likelihood of success, ensuring a careful balance between interest and feasibility. As part of this consideration, we need to show why we are the best people to do the proposed research, demonstrating a complete package in which the funding agency is convinced that it is worth investing both in the research and in the researchers proposing it. Achieving this delicate balance is further complicated by the need to capture the attention of reviewers who may read hundreds of applications in a variety of different formats. 

In this program, we will explore not only how to prepare an effective proposal but also how to use it as a framework to implement the research and build it towards publication. We will look at the relationship between the prospective writing required in a proposal and the retrospective writing in a research article, and in particular, how we can continue to make use of the thinking we do from the time we write a proposal through to the successful publication of the research. The program is suitable for researchers at all levels and is tailored to the needs of participants, ranging from an individual fellowship proposal to an application for an independent position or even a larger-scale program grant.