‘Not Another ARC Summer’: Grant Applications and Life Narratives of Motherhood

Australian Research Council Discovery (ARC) grants have low success rates for scholars in the Humanities, and women's success rates, particularly as project leaders, are also much lower than average. One of the strategies the ARC has developed to address these inequalities is the inclusion of the ROPE document which allows applicants to articulate Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence. In this chapter, I discuss my experiences constructing a ROPE statement. I argue that the limits of ROPE and the life narration it invites, function as a mode of “cruel optimism”, to borrow Lauren Berlant's term, which is consistent with the processes of grant applications more generally.