The Centre for Ethics, Law and Public Affairs (CELPA) at the University of Warwick has announced a mentorship program that “aims to support academics from groups underrepresented in moral, legal, and political philosophy, particularly researchers without established connections to elite institutions and scholars from the Global South.”

Led by Warwick’s Victor Tadros and Sameer Bajaj, the program will “support early career researchers (ECRs) in developing their research in order to help improve their career development and prospects. Established academics in moral, legal, and political philosophy will provide guidance to ECRs about how to improve a submitted essay to make it more likely to be accepted for publication.”

The program will have successive rounds, with the first focused on early career researchers in India.

Here’s how the mentoring scheme works:

Use of the scheme by eligible ECRs is completely free. Those who are accepted onto the scheme will be paired with a senior academic from our team. The team will be drawn from senior academics across the globe who are willing to participate.

The ECR will prepare some work for the academic to read, as well as a CV. The work will often be a draft paper, but it might also be a book proposal, or an ECR may just pitch an idea for an essay.

The academic and the ECR will meet online to discuss how to improve the work and its prospects for publication, as well as other opportunities to present the work to help improve it. Each mentor will normally be paired with one ECR per year and will be expected to read and offer feedback on one piece of work of up to 12,000 words. Normally the feedback will be given through an online meeting. Mentors may also provide written comments, career advice, and other support at their discretion.

However, mentees should have no expectation of an ongoing mentoring relationship with their mentor. The scheme aims at offering feedback only on a single piece of work.

The current list of the program’s mentors is here.

The program will begin accepting applications on September 1st. You can learn more about the mentoring program here. Questions about it should be directed to Ignacio Peña.