Hello fellow academics! This is probably a very strange place for this type of career advice but I thought I'd give it a go.
I am a relatively junior academic (just past post-doc). An opportunity has come up to bid for some external funding to conduct some research on behalf of an external body. This body would require a detailed report and I would be able to publish from the findings as well. The research is on an area in which I have already done a bit of work and would like to become an expert (by practitioners and other academics)!
My mentor has though suggested that I don't bid for it. He thinks that because I am not specifying the project and do not have total control over it, it would not lead to academic outputs with a sufficiently strong theoretical contribution. His advice is to devise a project of my own (albeit on a similar subject) from which I can publish, because that is the main priority, and not to worry about funding at this stage.
So question one: To bid, or not to bid?? And question two: IF I won the project, where would the money actually go? As I said, I already have a salary and the research itself does not really have a cost, per se, other than my time and basics such as transcriptions. If I won the money, could this be used to pay my way out of some teaching responsibilities? My mentor doesn't have an answer to this.
I would ask others in my dept about this, but am concerned that my mentor would take this as a slight and think that I didn't trust his advice (he's sensitive like that, it can get TERRIBLY political).
Has anyone got any thoughts?
Many thanks!!