Take the opportunity to get help writing an application for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship. Research advisors Elin Forslund, Joakim Bergström, Anna Holen and Anna Lobell will help you apply. Photo: Cecilia Yates.

2023-04-17

Get help applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Post

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding program is for doctoral and postdoctoral training of researchers. The call for a workshop on how to write a competitive application for the postdoctoral program is now open. Please register for the workshop by June 8 2023.

"This EU program is an excellent way to get funding to recruit foreign postdocs to Uppsala University," says Anna Lobell, research advisor at the University administration. The grant can also be used by researchers at the University who want to go abroad for a postdoctoral stay. An international postdoctoral stay provides an opportunity to broaden and develop your skills and is important if you want to continue your academic career after your doctorate.

The research advisors organize a workshop for grant applicants and their hosts at Uppsala University. This year's workshop will take place at Zoom on June 14 and 15, 2023.

Anna Lobell, together with Joakim Bergström, Elin Forslund and Anna Holen at the University administration, advises and helps researchers at the University who, together with foreign postdocs, want to apply for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship program.

- "The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship is a good merit if the postdoc later applies for a grant from the European Research Council (ERC)," says Anna Lobell. It is also possible to use the grant to develop skills needed outside academia, thereby increasing the chances of employment in industry or the public sector afterwards.

Workshop and personalized application support

Competition for Marie Skłodowska-Curie grants is fierce, and a successful grant provides an international stamp of quality of a researcher's future career. Uppsala University offers help to those interested in applying for the grants. In addition to the annual workshop, personal application support is offered to all applicants and their hosts at the University. The earlier you contact the research advisors, the more support they are able to provide. All applicants are advised to attend the workshop and to contact the advisors in good time, preferably six months before the deadline, so that the application can be planned and written.

- Uppsala University is usually awarded several Marie Skłodowska-Curie grants. There are many applicants and those who score more than 85 percent receive a "Seal of Excellence" that can be added to their CV to apply for other grants. The Swedish Research Council usually funds a number of postdocs who are placed on the EU's reserve list. In other words, applicants get more chances for postdoctoral grants by applying to the EU," concludes Anna Lobell.

Five new EU-funded postdocs

Last year, five postdocs were admitted to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship at Uppsala University. One of the admitted postdocs is Femke Geusens at the Department of Women's and Children's Health.

Femke Geusens is a researcher in media psychology with a focus on health communication. She has a PhD in communication science with a focus on media effects and has studied how social media use is associated with alcohol consumption by young people and students. Femke started in 2022 as a postdoc in the research project Pregnancy- and Childbirth-Related Media Use to Support Maternal Mental at the Department of Women's and Children's Health.

In the project, Femke will study how women with pregnancy-related anxiety use YouTube to seek information about pregnancy and childbirth.

'I want to know what role such videos can play in these women's pregnancy experience and whether watching these videos can reduce their anxiety,' says Femke Geusen.

- "I expect the research to be challenging but fun, and I hope to make new friends along the way. My hope is that it will open new doors for me. My dream is to become a professor one day and I hope that my postdoc in Uppsala will show the hiring committees that I am ready for the next step in my career," concludes Femke Geusen.

Cecilia Yates

Facts about Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship

Part of Horizon Europe, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship is one of the European Union's largest research programs for research training and postdoctoral training of researchers. The EU aims to support excellent research and promote the international mobility of postdocs. Therefore, applicants can not apply to conduct research in the country they have lived in for the last three years.

The grants are open to applicants with a doctorate degree from a maximum of 8 years ago in all research fields, who wish to develop their skills through a postdoctoral stay abroad. The grant also gives research group leaders an opportunity to recruit excellent postdocs from abroad to their research group at Uppsala University.

All nationalities are welcome to apply and the grant is normally for two years. You apply together with your host at, for example, Uppsala University. It covers a large part of the postdoc's salary for up to two years, but a small amount of co-financing is required.

those going from Uppsala University and Sweden, there are both European Fellowships and Global Fellowships to apply for, depending on which country you intend to go to. If you have difficulty finding a suitable host for your postdoctoral stay through your research network, you can look for a host on Euraxess (euraxess.ec.europa.eu).

The call's deadline is usually mid-September each year.

Workshops 2023

This year's workshop will take place on Zoom on June 14 and 15, 2023. Registration by June 8, 2023.

Filtration