The Philosophers' Cocoon

A safe and supportive forum for philosophers.

Owned & Moderated by Marcus Arvan (University of Tampa)

Contact: marvan@ut.edu

Blog mission & moderation policy

IMPORTANT NOTE on how to ensure anonymity in commenting
Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

recent posts

about

Finding/securing visiting positions for sabbaticals?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I’m a few years into my first job and I have a semester-long sabbatical coming up next year, and I’m trying to figure out what to do for it. I have heard of people doing visiting fellowships and stuff like that while on sabbatical but I don’t really get how this works, how to get them, or where they would be advertized, what the application cycle looks like, and what constitutes a good position/what I should look for. Can anyone offer some guidance on this?

Good question! I think some visiting fellowships are advertised on PhilJobs that appear to be intended for sabbaticals, but beyond that I'm not sure. 

Do any readers have any helpful insights?

Posted in

6 responses to “Finding/securing visiting positions for sabbaticals?”

  1. overcome zero replies

    I have followed this blog for a long while now, and noticed that every once in a while there are sabbatical questions like this which do not get (a lot of) replies. So maybe this isn’t the best place to ask, but I will try to help…
    Apart from the fellowship ads on regular websites like Philjobs, there is also information on grants and fellowships gathered by your university, and a significant portion of these are related to funding opportunities to visit another institution (e.g., Harvard, Princeton) for a semester or a year, which are clearly tailored for sabbaticals.

    Reply
  2. Might not like this

    Most fellowships are advertised on the websites of research centers and institutes.
    Honestly, the best way to learn about them is to know what centers regularly offer fellowships in your subfield. If you don’t know that (totally understandable), pull up the CVs of all the fancy people in your subfield and see where they did their sabbaticals.
    One piece of bad news is that most deadlines for the upcoming academic year have already passed. But if you just want to visit, as opposed to needing a fellowship, that’s probably still an option.

    Reply
  3. R

    I haven’t done a sabbatical but I’ve done visiting fellowships and it wouldn’t have occurred to me to look for ads or application cycles. If you want to visit a department it’s presumably because you know people there you want to interact with. So just email them and ask if you can visit. They can tell you how to proceed (there may or may not be a formal process).

    Reply
  4. Carmen

    Thank you very much Overcome zero replies, I appreciate it. Do you know where at my university I might look for this? I’m not in the US unfortunately, and i’m not sure my university has this kind of resource, but I appreciate it.

    Reply
  5. an older academic

    As others suggest, the question is a little ambiguous. Is it the FUNDING you are after, or merely the opportunity to visit a place? I have had four research leaves/sabbaticals, including my current leave. In the first two cases, my home institution was paying half of my salary. I personally covered the other costs. The third and current sabbaticals are fully covered. That is, I have my whole salary. In the one case, it is because I work at a place where that is the norm (and I even got a supplement to cover my extra living expenses). In the current case, I won a competitive grant that covers my salary for a year (a buy-out).
    There are grants out there. In philosophy of science, everyone knows about the visiting posts at Pittsburgh. (of course these are competitive). In Europe there are a number of Institutes of Advanced Studies that host scholars on sabbatical. They do have calls for funding. But they are very competitive.
    So there is the money. About visiting … as mentioned above, you should contact senior people at the place you want to visit. I have been a Visiting Scholar/Fellow at three institutions. There was a clear rationale for me being at each of them. I had a contact at each – indeed, you need to have a sponsor, usually. And I profited greatly, professionally and personally from these visits. But, as noted above, you need to settle this NOW, if you are going there in the fall.

    Reply
  6. overcome zero replies

    Oh, in that case, it might be different! But in my experience research universities usually have set up an office of research innovation or what not, which gives you (tailored) information about funding opportunities. There may also simply be a website on resources instead of an actual office. However, if you are unaware of this at this stage (you might be relatively senior to get a sabbatical), this probably means that your universities fail to support you in this respect (if they exist, they usually reach out). Sorry!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The Philosophers' Cocoon

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading