The Faculty of Music is happy to host postdoctoral fellows in any area of the discipline. We do not have funds to support fellows financially but host applications for national competitions. For UK/EU applicants, the main competitions are the British Academy’s Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme and the Leverhulme Trust’s Early Career Fellowships scheme. For non-UK applicants the principal schemes are the Newton International Fellowships and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships. These schemes differ in terms of subjects supported (for example the British Academy scheme does not support composition whereas the Leverhulme Trust one does) and also the time that has elapsed since your doctorate. Check the scheme web pages for further details.
We solicit requests to host applications for British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships during the summer and Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships later in the year with announcements on our home page and on the musicology-all email discussion list. Following an internal selection process we will tell you whether or not we are able to host your application, and if we are, we will offer feedback and advice on your project as well as handling the bureaucratic and financial sides of your application. In the case of the Leverhulme Trust scheme there is a further step, since the Trust only provides half the necessary funding: before they can apply to the Leverhulme Trust, prospective applicants need to apply to the University's Newton Trust for matching funding. We will provide details to those whose applications we have agreed to host.
Although we formally consider requests for hosting at these specific points each year, you may informally contact whichever member of the academic staff most nearly matches your research interests, or the Chair of the Faculty Research Committee, in order to discuss possibilities or register your interest. The same applies if you are interested our hosting your application to the Newton international Fellowships scheme, for which we do not normally organise an open competition.
For those applying from within the EU (but outside of the UK), the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships offer a one to two year opportunity to work abroad, collaborating closely with one of the academic staff in the Faculty. As this application process and the resulting projects are highly collaborative, you are encouraged to contact the academic you are interested in working with directly to discuss your proposal, copying your initial enquiry to the Faculty's Director of Research (DoR@mus.cam.ac.uk). Applications for this programme usually open in April with the deadline set during September.
We will also be happy to hear from you if you are applying under one of the Cambridge colleges’ Junior Research Fellowship schemes (details may be found on individual college web sites as well as at www.jobs.ac.uk). If you are successful, please let us know: we normally have a substantial community of postdoctoral researchers (check out our postdoctoral fellows page), who meet on a regular basis. As a JRF you are also invited to participate in Faculty life in other ways, for example through making contact with relevant staff and graduate researchers, attending our colloquia, and—if you wish—registering your interest in supervision work or other teaching.
Postdoctoral positions (fellowships or research assistants) are occasionally advertised in connection with Faculty-based research projects; details will be on our current vacancy list. Finally, if you wish to come to Cambridge to carry out postdoctoral work for a shorter period than the two to three years of most funded Fellowship, you should visit our Academic Visitors page.
