Hello everyone!

So I managed to secure some competitive AHRC funding for my PhD at a great University, starting this September!

I have a good academic track record, and I recently presented my first conference paper (I'm just starting to write up my MA thesis) and have been lucky enough to secure a small number of minor financial awards for my academic work, so I'm hopefully heading into my PhD with an academic CV that's fairly well-rounded already.

I'm just already thinking ahead to post-doc positions etc. (prematurely, I know), because my PhD is in Theatre Studies, and I know that while the market is tight for research in the humanities at the moment, from what I've seen it is especially so in theatre studies!

So my question is: Is there anything I can start thinking about doing now / thinking about now that will a) give me the edge when the time comes to send out further applications, and b) what advice would anyone have in terms of making connections with future projects in mind? There are some projects that I have in mind which I think would be very topical / very worthwhile, but is proposing your own post-doc projects to University departments a thing (or would that essentially just boil down to applying for a PhD again?) What are the main sources for post-doc advertisements, and how would people go about looking at institutions individually? I've looked but I can seldom find anywhere on university websites with specific advertisements just for post-doc positions!

I'm just trying to think with the future in mind here as I know it's a long way off, but I've read enough on here and elsewhere to know that the time can go unexpectedly quick, and I don't want to reach a point where I wish I could've gone back to now to do certain things / get things in motion, etc.!

Any and all advice is welcome :P

I've applied for AHRC funding for my PhD application via the M4C consortium, and was told that my application had been chosen to go to the final selection panel which took place in early March, and that I would be notified of the outcome by mid-March. It's now early April, and although I received an offer from the University way back in early February, I can't accept the offer without the funding as I am unable to afford to self-fund. I contacted the University, who simply said that they hadn't heard back from the consortium about their final decisions.

Is this kind of delay normal in these processes? Is it indicative in any way of the likelihood of my application being successful/unsuccessful, or is it more likely to be an administrative issue?

I'm hoping it comes through soon, so that either way I can start planning what I'll be doing once I finish my MA, but even my MA is starting to feel the effects of my jittery anxiousness as I'm not sure what to make of this silence!

Any advice from people with more experience with these funding applications (or any advice in general) would be greatly appreciated! :D