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A conference I'm submitting to will be able to offer limited financial support to a small number of participants needing assistance to attend the conference.. The date of the conference is several months after my PhD finishes and I don't know where I will be at that time, if anywhere, so I am asking for financial support. What should I focus on to maximise my chances?

So far I am mentioning:

  • The previous edition of the conference (for which I had other funding) was very useful for me. I presented paper A there (title, reference, I'm 1st author), and got major input that significantly improved paper B (title, reference, highle reuptable journal, I'm second author). Without my participation in the previous conference, paper B would not have been as good as it became.
  • The work I want to present now, which is paper C (almost ready for submission; probably published by the time of the conference; title, abstract; I'm 1st author) should be very relevant for the conference (should I send a copy of the full submitted manuscript?)
  • After the previous conference, I talked to a co-chair (name) and he encouraged me to ask for financial support should I be "between jobs" during the next edition (NB: he also encouraged me to explicitly mention his name, and I will)
  • My PhD is planned at <date>, and I currently don't know where I will be by then.

Does this roughly correspond to what they likely want to hear/know? Am I missing something? Am I saying too much? Should I focus on one aspect more than another?

(NB: the conference is held every 2 years and is in the field of remote sensing, and it is customary, but not mandatory, to write a non-peer reviewed paper for the conference proceedings)

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    Why wouldn't you mention the co-chair's name? Like many things, academia runs on networking.
    – mkennedy
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 22:08
  • I do mention the co-chair's name, but I don't mention that he explicitly encouraged me to state his name. I've edited for clarification, as I realise my formulation was confusing.
    – gerrit
    Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 9:37
  • Do you have to mention the last point (PhD date, where you will be)? Please don't get me wrong. I am not asking you to lie. But, do you absolutely have to say it?
    – Nobody
    Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 9:56
  • @scaaahu I don't know, should I? I'm the one asking the question here ;-)
    – gerrit
    Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 9:57
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    @scaaahu The reason I mention it is because it motivates why the internal funding I had the previous time is not an option now.
    – gerrit
    Commented Aug 6, 2013 at 10:07

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Its better to be honest and upfront. If not for ethical reasons, then for logical reasons that networks collide and you don't want to be found guilty of a few hundreds/thousands of dollars - which in the long run would be not much.

I was in a similar situation. I sent something similar to what you wrote and the folks replied back and gave me the funding from my new location. The other way to do this would be showing your affiliation as that of the "/". This is a technical fix - since that should get you the benefits of both locations. I prefer this because I am honest about where the work was done, and where I am today.

Hope this helps!

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  • Well, where the work was done was clear, but I won't be here anymore by then, so they can't fund me. Actually, the latter is a supposition on my side.
    – gerrit
    Commented Aug 9, 2013 at 23:12

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