Carleton Postdoc and Banting Fellow Rena Bivens, who is in the School of Journalism and Communication, has been recognized nationally and internationally for her research. She is currently investigating the design of social media platforms to discover how and why non-profit organizations (NPOs) are using them. Bivens is particularly interested in the use of these technologies by NPOs to educate and advocate for strategies and policies that aim to end gender-based violence.
She has five tips for PhD students who are interested in obtaining a postdoctoral fellowship when they graduate:
- Do your best to find a good match for your work, both in terms of supervisor and university/department
- Ensure that you make the connections in your application (i.e. stress that the supervisor and university is a great fit because of Institute X and fellow colleagues Y and Z, etc)
- Depart from your PhD research but choose something that you are very passionate about
- Make many, many drafts of your proposal and ask WIDELY for feedback; send it around to people even when you are not entirely happy with it; also, talk casually to as many people as you can about your ideas so that you are forced to keep reformulating your thoughts
- Figure out what gap you are hoping to fill and make the case for why it is vital that your work is funded
The Banting Fellowships are awarded to top-tier Canadian and international postdoctoral researchers at an internationally competitive level of funding. They are named after Dr. Frederick Banting who discovered insulin, enabling people with diabetes to live long and healthy lives. More information on the Government of Canada Banting Fellowship can be found at http://banting.fellowships-bourses.gc.ca/about-a_propos/index-eng.html.