Graduate students often stop thinking about funding proposals once the competition is over.
I received SSHRC doctoral funding in 2013 for a project that eventually became my dissertation, though in a form the proposal did not predict. The original document, linked below, shows how proposals work rhetorically and how thoroughly fieldwork can reorganize a project.
Context
In 2013, I received SSHRC doctoral funding for a project titled The Debunkers: Moral Identity in the Skeptical Movement.
The proposal focused on organized skepticism and science advocacy, examining how individuals build moral identities around critical thinking and opposition to pseudoscience. Public skeptical actions such as the coordinated homeopathy overdoses in the UK served as examples of how skepticism blends science communication with moral concern and civic engagement.
At the time, the project seemed clearly centered on skepticism as a movement organized around defending science in public life.
The dissertation that eventually emerged followed some of these threads, though fieldwork gradually shifted the focus toward atheist identity and lifestyle activism.
Contemporaneous public notes: Insecular (2012–2013).
Proposal documents
- Original SSHRC proposal (PDF) Download proposal
What the proposal tried to do
The proposal aimed to examine the skeptical movement as a form of lifestyle or identity-based activism centered on defending science and countering pseudoscience.
The project asked why people join the skeptical movement and build a shared identity around critical thinking. It also examined activism conducted through everyday practice.
Methodologically, the project proposed interviews, participant observation, and analysis of movement media and online discourse.
In hindsight, the opening framing and the feasibility story likely mattered most for funding success.
Writing moves that helped the proposal
The proposal’s early paragraphs do a lot of the work. At the time, I was mostly operating on instinct.
Grant reviewers rarely read proposals in ideal conditions. They read quickly, across disciplines, and often while mentally triaging risk. Early paragraphs therefore function less as introduction and more as orientation. They tell the reader what kind of project they are about to spend time with.
Opening with an event
The proposal opens by describing skeptics staging a mass homeopathic overdose outside pharmacies. The event gives reviewers something concrete before the theory begins.
From a writing standpoint, this also prevents abstract nouns from piling up too early. Starting with an event forces sentences to contain actors doing things, which naturally produces clearer subjects and verbs, the same principle behind Sentence mapping.
Reviewers read many proposals that begin with phrases like “In contemporary society…” or “There has been increasing attention to…“. Beginning with people doing something memorable helps a project feel grounded before theory enters the picture.
Moving from event to problem
The next paragraph widens the lens from the overdose event to science communication, misinformation, and civic engagement.
At the sentence level, each sentence answers the implicit reviewer question, Why does this matter beyond this specific case? The paragraph stays coherent because every sentence works on that question.
Framing identity as the analytical focus
The proposal frames skeptics as participants in moral identity work. This places the project in established sociological work on identity and lifestyle movements.
This section tells reviewers which intellectual conversations the project belongs to.
These sentences tend to succeed when they move from concrete case to theoretical conversation in small steps. Each sentence names a recognizable scholarly domain, and the reader arrives somewhere familiar.
Showing continuity with prior work
The proposal ties the project to my master’s research and doctoral preparation.
The section links past work, current training, and future research into a single trajectory.
Funding committees often look for evidence that a student can realistically complete the proposed work. Demonstrating that you have already been circling the problem space makes the proposal read as the next logical step.
Paragraph mechanics
Each paragraph performs one main function, something a Reverse outline can verify after the fact. When paragraphs try to accomplish multiple rhetorical jobs, proposals start to feel dense and uncertain.
Many successful proposal paragraphs establish a focus early and develop it. The final sentence may also point toward the next paragraph.
Sentence-level choices
Proposal sentences are easier to process when they identify who is doing what.
Compare:
Science communication is increasingly characterized by challenges associated with misinformation.
with:
Advocacy groups, media actors, and political campaigns now compete to shape how scientific information reaches the public.
The second version contains actors and actions. The reader can picture movement.
Proposals also benefit from limiting stacked abstractions. Phrases like identity formation processes within contexts of legitimacy negotiation compress too many conceptual steps into one unit. Expanding them into sequential claims often improves clarity.
Short sentences give the reader somewhere to stop. Dense prose makes the project feel harder to evaluate.
Feasibility
Committees ask whether the applicant can finish the project.
The research site was local and bounded. I had already interacted with some of the communities, so recruitment and access appeared realistic. The proposed interviews, participant observation, and content analysis required no unusual equipment or travel. The proposal also connected the project to supervisory expertise, archival material, coursework, and earlier research.
Twenty-five interviews and local fieldwork sounded achievable. That probably mattered.
How the dissertation actually evolved
The funded proposal and completed dissertation share roots, though the empirical focus shifted once fieldwork began.
While skepticism framed the original project, interviews revealed strong overlap between skeptical and atheist communities. Conversations frequently moved beyond pseudoscience toward questions of belonging, identity, and secular life.
Gradually, the project shifted toward examining atheist identity formation and lifestyle activism.
Community boundaries turned out to be porous. Participants regularly identified with both skeptical and atheist communities, which made strict separation artificial. As fieldwork continued, public science defense faded as the primary lens and personal identity struggles moved to the center. Activism also involved fewer protests than expected and more everyday commitments, social networks, and identity practices.
The dissertation, Atheist Identity and Lifestyle Among Activists in Edmonton, ended up focused on secular identity formation. Skepticism remained in the background.
What I misunderstood at the time
Several assumptions now look optimistic. I assumed skeptical communities would operate as distinct movement spaces with clean boundaries. In practice, identities crossed multiple secular networks and the boundaries were porous in both directions. I also underestimated how much internal disagreement shapes activist communities, and how interesting that disagreement would turn out to be.