Criteria for Evaluating Nominations and Proposals

Grants are provided to local community and indigenous peoples’ groups, and projects and individuals working with them. Support will not be provided to large projects or organizations with access to significant funding from other sources. Clear need, as well as the impact of the small grant, are central elements of the selection process.
Funds can be used to support infrastructure, staff time, and other ad hoc needs, and to address pressing resource management, traditional resource rights, social justice, and health concerns as they arise.

Field Fellowships are awarded to individuals working on applied ethnobiology or resource management issues within their own or others’ communities;
Individuals may or may not be undertaking academic research. The main objective is to address in a practical and applied manner pressing resource management, traditional resource rights, health and social justice issues identified by local groups;
Funds can be applied to the costs of field and project work, or to cover an individual’s time; the fellowship is intended to support well-respected individuals undertaking excellent work, without attaching many strings or creating bureaucratic demands on their time;
A solid track record is necessary, but priority will be given to individuals undertaking their work outside of traditional financial and institutional support structures, and therefore in more significant need of support. Individuals working on these issues often have limited or sporadic support for their work, and there are very few formal positions in the field of applied ethnobiology;
The Fellowship will seek to support members of local communities and indigenous peoples, and individuals from the countries where work will take place. But the emphasis is on the quality of the work, and its ability to address the needs of local groups and the Fellowship objectives, so Fellows may be from regions outside of the project area as well.

Academic achievement and qualifications (PhD) are required, in order to allow this individual to participate fully in the university community and help build the field of ethnoecology within academia.
The fellow can use the Fellowship as part of a sabbatical year at Oxford University, with the second year involving close ties and some time in Oxford, even if the individual is then based elsewhere. Individuals must be available to spend at least one year at Oxford, and at least a few months of the second year, while also maintaining ties to the University in the other months. Ideally, however, an individual would spend the full two years at Oxford.
Funds can be applied to time and costs of writing up research, as well as field research budgets.