Welcome and thank you for joining me on this adventure. For the newbies, you can catch up on previous post first blog post, second blog post here, third blog post here and fourth blog post here.

I finally got around to starting continuing the process of developing my NWO Vidi full proposal after making it through the pre-proposal stage. My approach to developing proposal usually involve first making a timeline to get an overview of how much time left until submission. This gives either confidence or panic about how manageable the process is going to be. So last week, I took a shiny new A4 Notebook in which I am going to develop my ideas the old school way of pen and paper. I’ve come to find that writing by hand with a pen on a paper helps me to think clearer and deeper – especially at the ideation stage of trying to piece together the central research idea. On the first page of my new A4 Notebook, I drew up the timeline and realised that there were only 10 weeks left before the submission deadline – cue mild panic at the size of the task.

Actually, today is the end of week 10 so we have only 9 weeks left! I told myself that the mild panic is understandable but staying in that state will not get the proposal written. A systematic planned approach offers me the best bet of developing a strong proposal that has gone through the wriggling of peer review critique and feedback along the way. On one hand 10 or 9 weeks sounds like a lot of time but on the other hand 10 or 9 weeks is nothing in light of my existing commitments. It does mean that while some sacrifices (less time reading football news on the Guardian online) are required, I also have to be reasonable with my expectations. Life as a father of 3, son, brother, friend, football player, colleague, teacher, supervisor etc. still goes on with all the demands that comes with these roles. The proposal writing need to fit around these roles somewhat.

A part of the mild panic reaction was rooted in the fact that I didn’t have a clear idea of the ‘mustard seed’ research idea I wanted to develop. There were many ‘high risk, high gain’ ideas swirling in my head but a strong proposal need to be grounded. I therefore spent Week 10 getting the fundamentals clear in my mind. I started with thinking through the possible combinations of a team for the project, how to divide up the budget of €850,000 across personnel, materials and others, the potential case study countries and sites, the overall methodological approach I could take with its pros and cons, the potential starting date of the project and possible evolution over the 5 years of implementation. Thinking through these sort of ‘administrative’ issues often help me to also narrow down my research ideas to find the most viable seed as a starting point. For instance, knowing that I want/need/can only afford 2 PhD students means that research idea should be one that can be sub-divided into at least two distinctive yet complimentary PhD projects. Then also if I need to think carefully of what I as the Principal Investigator would be able to do if the budget can only accommodate 0.3FTE of my time. It is quite the puzzle.

At the end of Week 10, I feel happy about the progress I’ve made in laying out the essential puzzle pieces. I have a clear idea of the team set up for the project, the cost of the team set up and the budget left for fieldwork and impact activities. Having these pieces sorted out means I can ground my ideas in the reality of what the budget makes possible – both the freedom and constraints. I can dream alright but the dream needs to fit the budget otherwise the proposal becomes wishful thinking.

Goals for Week 9: For next week when I have quite some teaching on the cards, my goals for the proposal writing remains modest. I want to think through and settle on the methodological approach for the project. I know I want some quantitative methods in this project but what will be the right mix of Qualitative-Quantitative methods and what might be the sequencing or will they be implemented simultaneously, or do I go fully quantitative for a change?

The adventure continues…see you next week Friday for the next instalment of the #NWOVididiaries blog post.