About this episode

Dr Maria Drummond discusses her experiences and insights gained from receiving her first major NIHR award.

Dr Maria Drummond narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher. There is a stage most researchers never write about: the stretch between a positive funding decision and actually getting started. This blog is about exactly that. It follows the news of a first major NIHR award arriving on a Friday afternoon at a farm park, the relief and disbelief of the moment, and then the confusion when the award turns out to be conditional. Over the following five months come rounds of committee feedback, clarifications and revisions, along with a quiet fear that asking too many questions will look like weakness. The turning point is a passing comment from another Principal Investigator about the long wait after their own positive outcome, which leads to the reassurance that conditional awards and iterative feedback are entirely normal. It ends by asking why funding success is so often presented as a clean, decisive win when the reality is iterative, negotiated and full of near misses. You can read it or listen to the audio narration. https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-what-my-first-major-nihr-award-taught-me/ -- Dr Maria Drummond is Team Leader at ENRICH Scotland, based at the…

People in this episode

Guest: Dr Maria Drummond

Topics covered

• research funding
• NIHR award
• conditional awards
• committee feedback
• iterative process

Keywords

• NIHR
• funding
• research
• Dementia Researcher
• conditional award
• committee feedback
• iterative process

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Dementia Researcher, ENRICH Scotland, University of Glasgow, NIHR

Places: Glasgow City, farm park

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