From the archive: Landing a Leverhulme Research Centre

Why ambition on big bids is not all about globe-spanning collaborations

For the fourth time, the Leverhulme Trust has pledged support of up to £1 million a year for over 10 years to multidisciplinary centres that will break new ground in any field. The deadline is 16 April and most applicants should be well into the ‘finalising and finessing’ stage of the bid.  

Our archive selection this week is for those applicants, but also for anyone mulling a large, complex bid. In it, Chris Thomas, director of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity—which won its grant in 2017—reflects on the approach that his team took to the application and why sometimes it is best not to go “breaching geographic and disciplinary boundaries simultaneously” in order to appear ambitious.