Visiting academics

The School for Policy Studies is often approached by academics from other countries wishing to spend time in the school to develop their research. We see this as enriching our work and offering opportunities for long-standing collaborative relationships.

However, there are limitations to the amount of resource that we can devote to this kind of experience and so the maximum stay is 6 months (we may consider a stay of up to 12 months in special circumstances). We want to make sure that visitors are well looked after and therefore, in order to keep up high standards, we have had to place a limit on the numbers we can accommodate in our school.

In order to be able to make fair decisions and maximise the effectiveness of visits for all parties, we have come up with some guidelines for visitors who wish to spend more than two weeks at a time in our department:

First contact

If you are interested in visiting the school, please email Professor Susan Harkness (School Research Director) sps-srd@bristol.ac.uk with the following information:

• your background and areas of expertise;
• brief purpose of the visit;
• approximate length of planned stay (maximum is 6 months) and the specific time of year (months);
• the name of any member of staff you are particularly interested in working with and the research centre you would hope to be based in (please state whether you have already discussed your planned visit with a member of the school);
• whether you have any disability access requirements;
• an up-to-date curriculum vitae.

We will aim to let you know the outcome of your application within three months.

Follow-up

A member of academic staff will be nominated as a point of contact during the visit. Visiting academics will be invited to participate in the activities of the centre and school, and also to deliver at least one seminar while here (this could be at a centre meeting, or as part of the SPS seminar series).

We aim to provide visiting academics with office and desk-space, access to a PC, the library, a phone (but not to an international line) and to photocopying facilities. Please note that we cannot provide assistance with living accommodation for visiting academics, although the University Accommodation office may be able to help.

Visiting postgraduate students 

The School for Policy Studies welcomes postgraduate research students who want to develop or extend their studies or research here. We are supportive of this enrichment which often leads to long-standing relationships with other universities.

To ensure we take good care of our visiting students, we have to limit the number of students we can host and we can only accommodate visits for up to 6 months (we may consider a stay of up to 12 months in special circumstances). 

To make study visits effective, all postgraduate research students who want to stay for more than 2 weeks will need to submit a formal application.

Eligibility

Visiting postgraduate research students must be currently registered as postgraduate research students at another institution either in the UK or internationally.

Applicants will need to show a strong academic record and a clear research plan for their visit.

Applicants should find a sponsor who is an academic member of staff at our School. This sponsor will support their application and agree their proposed programme of work.  The sponsor usually acts as a mentor during the visit.

Applications are only accepted from students who have the support of their identified sponsor.

If English is not your first language, you need to meet the University's profile level 'B'.