110 Landy and a £10k bursary - RGS

[Jodie]

One of the most exciting things ever to land in my post box is the new Royal
Geographical Society bulletin and this weekend I received the Autumn booklet.

It's also available online at: http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/Whats+on.htm
(Autumn bulletin download on the right hand side).

Anyway, RGS and Land Rover have joined forces to offer a bursary of £10,000
and the use of a 110 Defender to the winning team who'll get to go off and have
an expedition and then tell everyone about it. I hope it will be someone(s) from
here: http://www.rgs.org/OurWork/Grants/Land+Rover+Go+Beyond+Bursary.htm

"The Land Rover ‘Go Beyond’ Bursary, run by RGS-IBG on behalf of Land Rover, provides
£10,000 funding and the use of a Land Rover 110 Defender vehicle to help the successful
participants 'go beyond' when exploring their understanding of a particular geographical
environment.

The award aims to promote a wider understanding and enjoyment of geography and
should take the recipient beyond their normal limits and boundaries. The journey must
start and finish in the UK but can take place either within the UK or overseas.

The loan vehicle must be essential to the journey, and the winning teams will be expected
to share their experience(s) by documenting the journey in a medium of their choice:
digital; photographic; film, written; visual; musical etc.

The next application deadline is 30 November 2007. Full guidelines and details of how to
apply can be downloaded on the right."

And on the right you'd find this PDF
http://www.rgs.org/NR/rdonlyres/4EAF1A22-4D92-4A17-B077-97C6577B328A/0/LandRoverGuidelines2007.pdf
and there are other relevant documents there too.

 

[Jodie]

I'm a bit surprised that only one person (probably me!) has looked at this, although I
suppose this forum has a focus more on the UK rather than trips abroad - but they're
offering a car* and cash to gad off and explore so I'd be delighted if it was one of you.

*I say car when of course I mean 'vehicle'; this is Land Rover we're talking about

 

[dommyracer]

nice link! there's a few thing I could think of to do with a land rover and £10k..

might have to get my thinking cap on....

 

[dommyracer]

just read the guidelines and you have to have a clean driving licence and 3 year's driving experience.

I have neither, bang goes my idea....

 

[Robby]

That would be like getting paid to go and play, I've got the liscence covered, just need the proposal now???????????????:thinkerg:

 

[Fallow Way]

i`m seriously looking at it but waiting for a friend to get back from a trip before discussing it with him.

 

[Buckshot]

I looked at this several months ago but We'll have gone to the jungle and come back by the closing date

Oh well , there's always next year...

 

[Tourist]

Its actually quite amazing the bursaries that are out there for folks to pick up.

I did my Masters at the School of Geography, Leeds, after which I was encouraged to apply for a PhD. slot which was on line for me wanting to go into full time academia - at the time. I chatted the application over with my potential supervisor, Prof Stan Openshaw, who told me that in all honesty I would probably be the only applicant and the £15K a year slot was more or less guaranteed to be mine.

Stan was not wrong, I was the only applicant and the position had been widely advertised. Added to which when I looked around at the other PhD. candidates they were about 70% foreign students - basically because Brits were not applying for the research posts.

Some of the posts involved all sorts of outdoor and foreign research, all funded, and enjoyed by the research students. Plus there were the overseas conferences and presentations which are basically jolly's.......as long as you know your stuff and have done your research.

So go for it. I have my own jolly planned for November 2010 - January 2011, Spain to Ghana anyone?

 

[Jodie]

£15k for a PhD studentship outside of London sounds much more generous than most
PhDs I've heard of - that's excellent. Mind you I expect it's not all fun and games and
you'll have to do a smidge of work! But that sounds like a much fairer deal than what a
lot of my friends have been earning when they did theirs (in the biological sciences).

I think a speculative google for funds never hurts if you have a particular plan in mind, not
to mention giving local companies an 'opportunity for publicity' and a chance to
demonstrate their generosity in supporting someone doing something interesting. A bit
of oblique thinking helps too. There's always the Directory of Grant Making Trusts to
browse in a reference library. Definitely funds going begging.

Buckshot - one of the reason I sometimes post things that are actually past their sell by
date* (and which I might have just heard of) is precisely for that pre-emptive "next year".

Fallow Way - good luck

*though this one is in date of course.

 

[Tourist]

£15k for a PhD studentship outside of London sounds much more generous than most
PhDs I've heard of - that's excellent. Mind you I expect it's not all fun and games and
you'll have to do a smidge of work! But that sounds like a much fairer deal than what a
lot of my friends have been earning when they did theirs (in the biological sciences).

Twas mighty generous, it was a combination of money from:

1. Ford
2. A University owned company doing research for Ford
3. The funding agency whose name I forget
4. Payment for teaching, running and marking an MSc Programming module

My package was fiddled, $orry arranged, by my Professor who knew he had to compete with a job offer I received from Barclays for whom I had done my MSc dissertation project.

£15K is not that much when compared to some of the PhD packages you can get in the USA though. My thing was developing artificial intelligence programs, applying them to Geographic Information Systems to do predictive modelling for the movement of people to given situations..........the given situation Ford wanted modelled was to know how many people would be attracted to any given dealership or potential dealership location.......how's a 7% error rate on the prediction of the sales of motor vehicles, Ford were impressed.