General advice for postdoc applications

Advantages of doing a postdoc with us:

• 3-year postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by regional- (FWO) or university-level (BOF) grant
• No teaching obligation, which means plenty of time for research
• A team of Buddhist Studies specialists assures that you will not feel isolated with your research topic
• Our doctoral schools and lecture series broaden your horizons as a Buddhist Studies scholar and help you develop international networks
• Our reading group and research forum offer you a chance to enhance your teamwork skills and develop your conference presentations and journal papers
• Generous renumeration by the FWO: for junior postdoc, gross monthly salary (4 years seniority) is € 5,398.85 (index 2,0807 from 1/06/2024); for senior postdoc, gross monthly salary (7 years seniority) is € 5,731.26 (index 2,O399 from 1/12/2023)
• Research budget by the FWO (for conference trips, research stays, publication fees, etc.): from €4,000 to €10,000 per year (data as of September 2024)

Eligibility

• You hold a PhD by thesis or a degree or a diploma or certificate recognized as equivalent in accordance with European Union directives or a bilateral agreement.
• You have not yet benefited from this fellowship, not even partially.
• You can apply maximum two times for the same fellowship. You can apply for a senior postdoctoral fellowship immediately after your junior postdoctoral fellowship.
• You can apply for a junior postdoctoral fellowship if your PhD was obtained not longer than 3 years before October, 1 of the year in which the fellowship would start, or will be obtained at September 15 of that year at the latest (in the latter case you need to informs the FWO of the date of your public defense by 1 July of that year at the latest).
• You can apply for a senior postdoctoral fellowship if your PhD degree, with as reference point the date mentioned on the PhD degree, was awarded minimum three years and maximum six years before the first of October of the year in which the fellowship commences. You can always apply for a senior postdoctoral fellowship if you have previously enjoyed a junior postdoctoral fellowship. In that case, the senior postdoctoral fellowship must immediately follow the junior postdoctoral fellowship. You must have a postdoctoral research experience of minimum 2 years on the first of October of the year in which the fellowship commences. In case you have not had a (junior) postdoctoral fellowship from the FWO before, you must prove this experience by means of a declaration by the Flemish host institute. The declaration is to be signed by someone with signature authority, binding the host institute. Contact the host institute’s research co-ordination office for more info.

Application timeline

The FWO selection process consists of two stages: submission of a written proposal and—if it passes preselection—interview.

Key dates (as of September 2024; for detailed schedule, please visit the junior and senior postdoc sections on the FWO website):

• 2 December at 5pm: proposal submission deadline
• early April: invitation to interviews
• late April – early May: (physical) interviews
• late May: announcement of results
• 1 October or 1 November: start of fellowship

This means that it is desirable to contact your prospective supervisor at Ghent University no later than EARLY OCTOBER. Writing the application is LONG and COMPLEX, so the sooner you start working on it, the better your chances are.

Application process step-by-step

Step 1: Check if your project fits into our areas of expertise

If you are interested and eligible to join the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies as a postdoc fellow, the first step is to have a look at the profiles of our professors and determine who might be your perspective supervisor. As of September 2024, the main regional areas of our expertise are:

– Chinese Buddhism (Professors Ann Heirman, Christoph Anderl, and Bart Dessein)

– Japanese Buddhism (Professors Anna Andreeva and Andreas Niehaus)

– Indian Buddhism (Professor Daniela De Simone)

– India and Central Asia (Professor Charles DiSimone)

Step 2: Contact us

If you are planning to do a postdoc in one of these fields, write an e-mail to your prospective supervisor at the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies describing your research interests. Append a CV to this e-mail.

Step 3: Create an FWO account

First, create an account on the FWO E-portal. The navigation on this portal is described in pages 1-9 of the Junior postdoc example application form and Senior postdoc example application form. (These PDFs were backed-up as of September 2024; for updates, please visit the FWO website.)

Account approval usually takes no more than 2 business days.

After logging in, fill out your personal information in the E-portal. As a future service address in Belgium, put “Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent.”

You can now click through everything to get an idea of what is required for your application.

Step 4: Start writing your research proposal

The FWO application consists of two parts:

(1) project outline, which you will upload as a PDF file (pages 20-21 of the Postdoc example application form)

(2) questions section, which you see directly on E-portal (see pages 10-19, 22-54 of the Postdoc example application form)

Begin by addressing point (1) here, i.e., writing the project outline. It should be 10 pages in length and must be formatted in 11-point Calibri font, single-spaced, page margins, etc.

Based on our experience, we have prepared a detailed guide for filling out various sections of the project outline, so we highly encourage you to consult it.

Please do start writing well in advance! As we have mentioned above on this page, FWO applications have a 30% success rate. But in fact 90% of candidates who contact us fail to submit their application at all, and the main reason is a lack of time for us to offer feedback and for the candidate to revise the draft into a well-developed research proposal.

Step 5: We help you revise your draft

Send the draft of your project outline to your prospective supervisor no later than the END OF OCTOBER. We read your draft and offer advice on how to improve it. You revise your draft based on our suggestions and resubmit it to us. This may take several rounds of revisions. So it is very important to submit your first draft well in advance and allow us enough time to get a closer look at your proposal.

Step 6: Write the answers to the items in the questions section of the application

Based on our experience, we have prepared a detailed guide for answering these questions, so we highly encourage you to consult it. It is advisable to write your answers in a Word document first and copy them to the portal during final submission.

Step 7: Consult an English-language editor

If you are not a native speaker of English, we recommend submitting your project outline and your answers to questions to an English-language editor. You can ask us for suggestions of suitable editors, but please be aware that we offer no funding or reimbursements for their services.

Do not forget that the English editor also needs time to look through your files, and you need additional time to review their suggestions. So contact your editor well in advance to book a time slot in their schedule around NOVEMBER 20-25, and set this as a deadline for yourself in revising your project outline and preparing the answers to questions.

Step 8: Final submission

Copy your answers to questions to the E-portal and upload your project outline, but do NOT submit yet. E-portal has a preview function, which allows you to download a PDF showing what your submission will look like when the experts receive it.

Check the PDF to make sure that everything is fine (no traces of tracked changes, etc.) and only then submit.

Note

If you were invited to the interview with the FWO expert panel but you did not receive the FWO grant, your application will be automatically reviewed by the BOF fund of Ghent University. There is no need to revise the application for the Ghent review board.