Arts PhD Fieldwork Grant

Eligibility and selection criteria

Eligibility

To be considered for this grant, you must:

• Be enrolled in a PhD degree in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne;
• Be Confirmed;
• Be able to demonstrate that the primary data collection for your PhD requires fieldwork methodology with strong support from your Advisory Committee. Assessment of applications for fieldwork support will be based not on the discipline, but the methodology involved;
• Have a Research Expenses Plan approved by your Advisory Committee at Confirmation of Candidature; and
• Be able to demonstrate that you have met all relevant University policy requirements relating to their fieldwork (such as compliance with the University’s code of conduct for research and student travel policy): Research Integrity Principles, Student Travel and Transport Policy (MPF1209), Graduate Research Training Policy (MPF1321), Academic Progress Review Policy (Graduate Research) (MPF1363).

Selection criteria

The selection is based on:

• How your methodology meets the guidelines of what constitutes fieldwork
• That the proposed fieldwork is essential and integral to your thesis
• The Research Expenses Plan approved at Confirmation of Candidature

Methodological approaches relevant to this scheme include ethnographic and linguistic research techniques, and studies requiring immersion or other site-intensive work. These may include participant observation or interview-based strategies that must occur over a sustained period of time‚ or other types of field-based research projects that requires the graduate researcher to be embedded within a particular field location or locations. Fieldwork funding may also be appropriate for research projects requiring long-term strategies of building trust to gain access to the object of research.

Fieldwork may consist of deep immersion in one place or research in a number of sites – in either case, the onus is on the graduate researcher to make the case as to how the proposed research meets the other criteria for fieldwork funding.

What is not fieldwork?

Visits to libraries, museums, archives, and other forms of data collection or research that do not require the graduate researcher to be embedded at the location, visits to other universities, to consult with academics or to attend conferences and data gathering and analysis performed by professional companies or private individuals on behalf of the graduate researcher.

Conditions

The Arts PhD Fieldwork Grant is subject to the Faculty of Arts Graduate Research Support Grant Terms and Conditions.