The Laura Bassi Scholarship was established by Editing Press in 2018 with the aim of providing editorial assistance to postgraduates and junior academics whose research focuses on neglected topics of study, broadly construed, within their disciplines. The scholarships are open to every discipline and are awarded three times per year: December, April, and August. The value of the scholarships are remitted through editorial assistance as follows:
Master’s candidates: $750
Doctoral candidates: $2,500
Junior academics: $500
These figures reflect the upper bracket of costs of editorial assistance for master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and academic journal articles, respectively. All currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of their employment. There are no institutional, departmental, or national restrictions.
Deadlines
Winter 2019
Deadline: 25 November 2019
Results: 15 December 2019
Spring 2020
Deadline: 25 March 2020
Results: 15 April 2020
Summer 2020
Deadline: 25 July 2020
Results: 15 August 2020
How to Apply
Applicants are required to submit a completed application form along with their CV using the portal prompted by the ‘Apply’ button below by the relevant deadline.
To help defray the Scholarship’s administrative costs, applicants are subject to a voluntary USD 10.00 fee. All applicants who are unable to pay the application fee are welcome to take advantage of the fee waiver option on the application portal. If you wish to pay the application fee in a non-USD currency, please consult the FAQ below for instructions.
Answers to common questions about the application process are provided in the FAQ section. In order to avoid delays, applicants are encouraged to read the FAQ carefully before writing to us with their questions.
Bassi Scholars
For a list of Bassi Scholars, past and present, including statements of research, please see below.
Laura Bassi
Born in Bologna in 1711, Laura Bassi was the first woman to take up a professorship in Europe and the second to earn a doctorate. Her extraordinary career as an academic spanned nearly five decades, for much of which she was a galvanizing figure for the scientific culture of eighteenth century Europe. Bassi’s admirers included the likes of Voltaire in France, who preferred Bassi’s academy to that of London’s, and Dorothea Erxleben in Germany, the first woman to earn a medical doctorate, who notably found inspiration in Bassi’s fierce struggle for equal opportunity for women. Bassi’s career culminated in her succession to the chair of physics (then known as natural philosophy) at the University of Bologna in 1776—a role in which her husband, Giuseppe Veratti, was her assistant.
The Editing Press Laura Bassi Scholarship is named in her honour, in part with the intention of supporting work undertaken against the grain of the disciplinary fashions of academia.
For further reading on Laura Bassi, see:
The Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna (in collaboration with the Stanford University Libraries) has compiled a digital archive of Bassi’s family papers, available here.
For further reading on pioneering women academics, philosophers in particular, see:
TB Dykeman (ed), The Neglected Canon: Nine Women Philosophers (Springer 1999)
FAQ
How much funding is available in each round?
- We have set aside $8,000 per round of funding (or roughly $24,000 per annum), which is divided between any combination of master’s, doctoral, or junior academic applicants at the discretion of the Scholarship Advisory Board.
Who sits on the Scholarship Advisory Board?
- The Advisory board comprises the members of our editorial collective in addition to academics in fields with which we are not especially familiar and whose expertise we may need to call upon in judging the applications before us.
How can I pay the voluntary application fee in a non-USD currency?
- You may use our standard payment portal, the instructions for which are available here. You can then return to the application portal and select the fee waiver option. The system will automatically pair your application with your payment provided that you use the same e-mail for both. If you have a Canadian bank account, you are also welcome to send an Interac e-transfer to payments@editing.press, and then send us a note indicating that the fee has been paid.
If I am awarded the Scholarship, how long do I have to submit my manuscript for editorial work?
- There is no expiry for the use of the Scholarship funds.
How many times can I apply?
- There are no restrictions on how many times one can apply, nor on how many times successful candidates can apply—though, in the case of the latter, preference is given to applicants who have not been given scholarships in the past.
Can I apply with more than one manuscript?
- We ask that candidates restrict themselves to one manuscript per application per funding round.
Do you favour certain disciplines over others?
- Not at all. Applicants from every discipline are encouraged to apply.
My university does not consider me as a ‘candidate’ in my master’s / doctoral programme yet, but am I still eligible for the Scholarship?
- Yes, and you are very much encouraged to apply.
Can I submit an application in a language other than English?
- The application must be submitted in English, but we are happy to consider awarding the Scholarship for non-English language manuscripts. In addition to English, we are also able to work in French, German, and Spanish.
Do I need to submit a manuscript along with my application?
- No, the only documents required are your CV and application form.
If I am awarded a scholarship, am I required to publish my work with Editing Press?
- No, Editing Press does not publish monographs or journal articles through the Laura Bassi Scholarship.
My files exceed the 5mb limit of the application portal. What can I do?
- We recommend using an online PDF size reducer and then trying to upload your files again. If that does not work, you are welcome to submit your application form without your signature (incorreclty formatted signatures are typically the cause of bloated file sizes).
I am a co-author of a paper or book. Can my co-author(s) and I submit joint applications?
- Yes, absolutely. In addition to the standard application form, we will also need copies of each author’s CV.
I am a part-time student. Am I still elgible?
- Yes, and you are very much encouraged to apply.
Can the funds from the Scholarship be used for other purposes, such as open access fees or, indeed, anything else?
- No, unfortunately. The value of the Scholarship can only be remitted through editorial assistance provided by Editing Press.
Can I submit my application by e-mail?
- We are no longer able to accept applications by e-mail, so please use the application portal.
I was unable to upload one or both of my application document(s), or would like to update my application document(s). Can I do this by email?
- We are unable to accept application documents by email without breaching our impartiality rules. If you were unable to upload your document(s), please try the application portal again with a different browser. In the event that you paid the voluntary administrative fee with your first attempt, please select the fee waiver option in subsequent attempts.
The application portal is not accepting my documents even though they are in the right format and under 5mb. What shall I do?
- This sometimes happens with certain PDFs. We recommend saving a size-reduced version even if the documents are under 5mb and then trying the portal again.
I have more questions, how can I get in touch?
- You may submit your queries to scholarships@editing.press. Provided that the answer to your question is not indicated in the FAQ above, please allow 24 hours for a response.