Departmental Conference Travel Funding

Overview

The Department of Philosophy offers some financial support to its graduate students who are travelling to conferences to give talks. (We do not fund mere attendance at a conference.) This funding functions as a supplement to whatever funding that the College of Arts (the administrative unit above the Department) is able to offer through its Graduate Travel, Research and Creation Fund. Accordingly, you must apply first to the College and then, after getting the result of that, to the Department. The latter process is very simple and piggybacks on the former as far as paperwork is concerned.

The department will fund at most one trip per application “round.”

How to apply

The application process involves two steps: you apply first to the College then, after you have received their decision, you apply to the Department for any additional funding that you need.

1. Apply to the College of Arts Graduate Travel, Research and Creation Fund. This fund has two rounds of applications per year, with overlapping windows of eligibility. It is your responsibility to check that the date of your travel falls within the window of the round of applications in which you are applying. As that web page notes, each round you may apply for funding for at most one trip.
2. Within two weeks of receiving the College’s decision on your application to them, you apply to the deparment. Your application to the department comprises:
   • a printout of the email from the College giving the result of their evaluation of your application to them;
   • the application you submitted to them
   • the department’s checklist, filled out.

   Submit all this to our Administrative Assistant, Vanessa Joy.

3. Please note the importance of complying with the departmental timeline! If you delay your application to the department, we may very well have allocated all available funding for that round of applications, on the basis of the applications we had in hand at the end of the 2 week period.

How the department decides on amounts

• The maximum amounts we will offer per conference are $600 for an in-Canada conference and $1,200 for an outside-Canada conference.
• As with the College competition, the department takes into account “the application’s quality and its relevance to the student’s program of study.” Indicators of quality include: evidence that the conference practices blind refereeing of submissions; whether it is a professional or graduate-student conference; etc.

How to get the money

Reimbursement will be handled by the department—remember to give Vanessa Joy all receipts, including boarding passes, within two weeks of your return from your conference trip.