AHRC early career fellowships

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has announced a call for early career fellowships in cultural and heritage institutions. This will fund a cohort of fellows to undertake two-year research fellowships at Independent Research Organisations (IROs) like MOLA.  

If you're interested in applying for a fellowship to be based at MOLA, please see below for our four strategic areas of research interest for this call, and other tips to support your application. Please note that this opportunity is only open to people who don't already work at MOLA.

Four strategic areas of research interest

1. Thinking beyond the site: data and synthesis: taking advantage of MOLA’s complex projects, with wide temporal and geographical reach, the associated scale of data available for study, and our exceptional body of staff with relevant expertise.
    
2. Sustainability, ecology, and the environment: intersections of environmental archaeology, modelling and mapping of ecological and environmental change, land use, geoarchaeology, and contemporary concerns for climate action and sustainability.
    
3. New futures for archaeology: applying a creative and speculative lens to archaeology as a field of research, practice and interpretation. Archaeology’s contribution to the Anthropocene, to wellbeing, to what a de-colonised development-led archaeology might entail, to alternative approaches to storytelling, to citizen leadership in research, and public engagement, to innovations with visual and sensorial practices, helping conceive radically different futures for the discipline.
    
4. Digital, data and archives for collective benefit, and immersive and interactive production: priming data and their infrastructures (FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and utilising primed data to experiment with outputs that support social, emotive, reflective, climate accountable, sustainable outcomes that draw on the affordances of the digital.

As well as aligning your application to our areas of research interest, we'd also like you to consider how you could contribute to our wider research culture. This includes participation in our cross-MOLA Research Groups (themes: Thinking Beyond the Site: data and synthesis; Sustainability, Ecology, and the Environment; and New Futures for Archaeology) and our cohort of AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership students, shaping the future direction of research at MOLA.

A successful fellow will consider how their research can generate impact beyond MOLA in particular, and archaeology more widely. You'll will have the opportunity to apply for funding to work with colleagues and external partners to further develop their research impact through our AHRC Impact Accelerator Account, enabling archaeology to deliver greater benefits for society.

As an educational charity and leading archaeology and built heritage practice, our research is rooted in practice, and we are interested in applicants who can combine academic research with a practitioner background. We will place value on candidates’ experience in archaeological / heritage practice and community engagement, as well as academic qualifications.

MOLA often collaborates with research partners at HEIs, other IROs, and the third sector. We are open to fellowship proposals that incorporate partnerships with other organisations where appropriate. 

Please click here to contact Emma Dwyer (Head of Grant Funded Research) to discuss this opportunity further.