Writing Your First Grant Proposal

Securing third-party funding is a central skill for an academic career, yet few researchers receive systematic training in how to design and write a competitive proposal. This three-hour workshop offers a practical, hands-on introduction to the “nuts and bolts” of successful grant writing, tailored to PhD students and early-career postdocs in the social sciences without prior experience with grant writing.

We will cover the core building blocks of a convincing proposal: clarifying your research idea, positioning it within the literature, identifying and articulating a genuine research gap, formulating sharp and feasible research questions, and designing a coherent and realistic work program with clear milestones and deliverables. Particular attention will be paid to structure and strategy: What must be on the first page? How do you present your contribution and prior experiences persuasively? How do you align ambition with feasibility? (How) can you influence reviewer selection, for example by strategically citing certain works?

Using the structure of a DFG proposal as a blueprint, we will walk through the logic of each section, while highlighting how these principles transfer to other funding agencies and formats. The workshop combines short, focused inputs with interactive exercises that allow participants to apply the concepts directly to their own project ideas. In the inputs, we will draw on our long-standing experience of successfully (co-)authoring proposals for the DFG and other funding lines, while also sharing insights gained from our failed grant applications.

By the end of the session, participants will have a clear roadmap and practical tools to develop a well-structured and compelling draft for their first grant proposal.

Date & Time:

The course will take place in person at the GIGA in Hamburg on 11 June 2026 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Please note that this course is GIGA internal only.

About the trainers:

David Kuehn is Senior Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies. His research focuses on civil-military relations, democratization, authoritarianism, and research methods.

Julia Grauvogel is Senior Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute for African Affairs. In her current research she is concerned with international sanctions, persistence and change of authoritarian regimes, as well as the latter's legitimation.