Support to Applicants and Fellows

The Churchill Fellowship is committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion. We promote these values through our Fellowships, which embrace all groups and issues in society. This page outlines the support we provide to ensure that as wide a range of people as possible can access our funding.

Applying for a Fellowship

We want everyone to be able to access our funding and we know that some people may need additional support. This might be a result of disability or another reason that makes it more difficult to apply.

We recommend you contact us well before the deadline to allow us to put the best support possible in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the deadline.

Some of the ways we might be able to support you:

• You could use a word of the application form (available during the application window)
• You could use an easy read version of the application form (available during the application window)
• You can audio record part of the online form
• You can work with a scribe to help you complete the online form
• You can talk to us to clarify any questions about the application form or process

If you’d like to talk to us, please call us on 020 4591 2419 between 9.30am and 5pm Monday to Thursday (and 9.30am and 4pm on Friday) or email us on applications@churchillfellowship.org. 

If you are shortlisted for interview there will be an opportunity to let us know if you require any reasonable adjustments so that we can discuss with you how best we can meet these. We can provide additional support with accessing an in-person interview or offer an online interview as an alternative.

How your application will be assessed

All applications are anonymised before they are assessed. This means that our assessors do not see any details of the applicant’s name, age, gender or other defining characteristics that might create a risk of unconscious bias.

As best we can, we select members for our interview panels from diverse backgrounds and with a broad range of professional and lived experience. Our panels include experts in the relevant programme area and often include Churchill Fellows.

In making our Fellowship awards, we prioritise people who would be less likely to receive funding from other sources and who have lived experience of the issues that they want to explore.

Carrying out a Fellowship

If you are successful in your application to become a Fellow, we can provide additional support to enable you to carry out your overseas learning. Support may include, but is not limited to, paying for the cost of a personal assistant to travel with you, or paying for communication support needs, such as a British Sign Language (BSL) translator, when interviewing people as part of your learning.

We have also introduced a hybrid option and an online option for carrying out overseas learning which involve less or no travel overseas.

We strive to achieve the highest standards in equity, diversity and inclusion in our application processes and support that we offer to applicants and Fellows. This is a continuous journey, and we welcome feedback on how we can improve. If there is something else we can do to make the information we share or our application processes more accessible, please email us at applications@churchillfellowship.org.