The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s hosts annual Fellowships in memory of its first director, Ciaran Carson, and inspired by his writing about the city of Belfast in prose as well as poetry.

The Ciaran Carson Writing and the City and the Publishing Fellowships, each carry a stipend of £10,000, and are awarded to recently completed PhD students at the School of Arts, English and Languages. 

Fellows will be encouraged to carry on with their own creative work, to contribute to or develop projects relevant to the Fellowship’s themes and complementary to the extracurricular programme at the Seamus Heaney Centre, and to provide occasional teaching support to existing taught programmes at the Seamus Heaney Centre (MA in Creative Writing and MA in Poetry).

We invite anyone who has completed a PhD at the School of Arts, English and Languages in the past two years to submit an up-to-date CV, with a record of publications and activities, alongside a brief cover letter stating their interest in the fellowships. As the Fellowships are awarded annually, eligible CVs will automatically be carried over into the following year. This year applicants must have completed (or expect to complete) by the end of Jan 2026. 

Submit to: r.brown@qub.ac.uk
Deadline: Mon 1 Dec 2025

Find out more about previous Fellows here.