The FSA Mentoring Scheme aims to foster a strong feminist community that encourages supportive and collegial relationships between members of the Association. The scheme is for FSA members who have passed their PhDs and are early- or mid-career scholars. Further details for 2023/2024 to follow.

Mentees will be paired with a more experienced mentor who is able to pass on advice or share experiences. With academic work becoming ever more precarious and competitive, the aim of the mentoring scheme is to counter this environment with a collective feminist politics and provide a support system for feminist colleagues. Having received supervisory support during their PhD work, some researchers find guidance at this point of the academic career trajectory to be lacking. In particular, the FSA aims to support those without institutional provisions or other sources of mentorship.

The mentoring meetings may focus on issues, challenges or experiences relating to academic matters, job applications, publications and research, teaching tips, career anxieties, academic politics, feminist mobilising in academia, inequalities and academia, intersectionality and academia etc. This is not an exhaustive list and it will be up to the individual mentors/mentees to decide; please specify in your application what support you require and your preferences.

Mentees will be introduced to their mentor by email, and we envisage that this will be an informal relationship to provide good counsel. It is a supportive, one-to-one relationship, within a confidential and supportive environment, and based on mutual trust. The mentoring relationship will last 12 months over the academic year (October-September). We suggest that once mentors and mentees are matched by FSA that they mutually agree the expectations of the coming year. Mentors and mentees may wish to stay in touch afterwards, but this is not a formal agreement.

I found this scheme invaluable and it has been central to my navigation of the post-PhD period, where guidance is often lacking. My mentor was a joy to talk to and thoroughly approachable on all topics. Thank you FSA.

This was a deeply enriching, well-supported scheme to be part of. As a mentor I learnt from my mentee and I hope the other way around, just as it should be. I am so pleased I was asked to do this – it has been a joy.

Apply to the mentoring scheme