Pre-call Announcement: MRC/AHRC/ESRC Adolescence, Mental Health and the Developing Mind Initiative – Call for Research Programmes

The Medical Research Council (MRC), Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) will soon be launching a £24M call for ambitious multi and inter-disciplinary Research Programmes. This funding will come from the new cross-Council initiative in Adolescence, Mental Health and Developing Mind, which is supported through the UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund.

The call will make £24M available to fund impactful multidisciplinary research at a range of interfaces, including medicine, biology, social science, arts and humanities. Applications are also welcome which draw in non-traditional disciplines that can provide novel insights and approaches to mental health research. It is excpected that the call will fund a number of multidisciplinary research programmes for up to £4M each over a 4 year period.

The initiative will provide funding for multi- and inter-disciplinary teams with the aim to:

• Address important and novel research questions under the broad scope of Adolescence, Mental Health, and Developing Mind.
• Actively strengthen intersections between disciplines that do not routinely engage with each other, build capacity in the field and develop skills.
• Embed knowledge mobilisation and strengthen patient and public involvement.

The call will involve a 3 stage process, with an invitation for outline proposals, invitation to a full stage proposal and international peer-review and interview by an expert panel.

Key Dates

Activity	Date
Pre-call announcement	January 2020
Call for Outlines opens	March 2020
Outline deadline	June 2020 tbc
Call for full proposals opens (invite only)	August 2020 tbc
Full proposal deadline (invite only)	October 2020 tbc
Start Date	1 April 2021

For more information about this call, including the scope, please visit the MRC website.

If you are interested in applying to this scheme please contact the Research Development Team.

Governance after Brexit – ESRC call for Outline proposals

The ESRC invites outline proposals for the second phase of its Governance after Brexit programme.

Brexit affects society, politics and the economy across the UK. The UK-EU exit negotiations have challenged the UK state, devolved political systems, local government, business organisations and trade unions, civil society organisations and the wider public. The primary aim of this call is to encourage proposals which adopt a long-term perspective and/or involve fundamental research into issues of governance, and the questions, problems and opportunities which lie behind and beyond the negotiations. Proposals to this call should address the priority areas outlined in the Call Specification either individually or in combination.

Proposals should address the call’s key research challenges and opportunities in an innovative and ambitious manner. This may include conceptual and theoretical innovation as well as the development of novel research methods and approaches. Potential innovation is an assessment criteria for this call and proposals which demonstrate a clear capacity for innovation are preferred over proposals which might seek to redeploy existing work in a Brexit context.

Awards made under this phase of the programme will be expected to work closely with ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe initiative (UKICE) to maximise the opportunities to disseminate this distinctive long-term research perspective on Brexit. Outline proposals to this call should therefore articulate clear plans for engaging with UKICE as part of their impact strategy.

Assessment process and Anonymous Case for Support

Please note that shortlisting at the Outline Stage for this call will be based entirely on the Case for Support document attached to outline proposals. This will be conducted on a double-blind basis where the identity of each party (applicants and panel members) are concealed from the other party. As a result the Case for Support for outline proposals must be sufficiently anonymised in order to avoid directly or indirectly revealing the identity of the project team to assessors. Names of individual researchers or specific research organisations should therefore not be included. References to previous work should also be conveyed in terms which do not risk identifying the applicants to assessors. Where this attachment is deemed insufficiently anonymous proposals may be considered ineligible for processing.

Shortlisted applications will subsequently be invited to submit full proposals for further assessment.

Webinar

ESRC will host an online Q&A session with Professor Dan Wincott, Cardiff University (Director of Governance after Brexit). This webinar will provide prospective applicants with an opportunity to ask questions about the scope and priority areas of the call. The date/time of the webinar will be announced on this page in due course alongside information on how to join the meeting online.

How to apply

All proposals must be submitted through UKRI’s Joint Electronic Submission system (Je-S) (https://je-s.rcuk.ac.uk/JeS2WebLoginSite/Login.aspx). Detailed information about how to apply is provided in the Je-S guidance below.

Outline proposals should be between £300,000 and £750,000 at 100 per cent Full Economic Cost (fEC) and should start from 1 November 2020 for a maximum period of 36 months. The ESRC will meet 80 per cent of the full economic costs of proposals that are funded under this call. All outline proposals for this programme must be received by 16:00 on 16 January 2020.

Commissioning timetable

• Closing date for outline proposals – 16:00 on 16 January 2020
• Shortlisting Panel meeting – February 2020
• Full proposals invited – early March 2020
• Closing date for full proposals – mid April 2020
• Assessment period – May-June 2020
• Commissioning Panel meeting – July 2020
• Final decisions – August 2020
• Grants to start – 1 November 2020

Please contact your Research Development Manager if interested.

All info and Guidance is here: https://esrc.ukri.org/funding/funding-opportunities/governance-after-brexit-phase-2-outline-stage/

 

UKRI-NHMRC Built Environment and Prevention Research Scheme

The Medical Research Council and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council together with the Economic and Social Research Council are inviting proposals to the UKRI-NHMRC Built Environment Prevention Research Scheme.

Award Amount: £2m will be made available for the call to fund all projects that are awarded ($4m AUD will be made available to cover the Australian budgets).

Duration: 3 years

Deadline: 15th October 2019, 4pm

There is a need in both the UK and Austrailia to improve our understanding of the factors that work to shape and support healthy, liveable and resilient built environments, and to develop approaches for improving the built environment and prevents NCDs. Applications are encouraged across the breadth of the built environment research areas, the following are examples of what is expected:

• Urban planning and regeneration.
• City design, including increasing conditions that promote health such as ‘active travel’ and access to green space,
• Housing.
• Transportation systems.
• Air quality, both indoor and outdoor, and noise.
• The indoor environment.
• Neighbourhood diversity, including social regeneration and social, cohesion, and access to health services.
• The relationship between the built environment, extreme weather events, and their impact on health.

For Further information on this call please visit the call announcement. If you would like to apply for this scheme then please get in touch with your Research Development Team.

MRC Pre-call announcement: UK-Canada Diabetes Research Team Grants

The UK Medical Research Council (MRC), the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) are pleased to announce the up-coming launch of the UK-Canada Diabetes Research Team Grants.

Call Opens: 11th June 2019

Deadline: 28th August 2019 (4pm)

Funding: CAN: $450,000, UK: £333,333

Duration: Up to 3 years

The focus of the collaborative projects will be upon ‘mechanisms and translational solutions’. Projects should focus on one or more of the following key diabetes knowledge gaps:

• Genetic variability.
• Molecular mechanisms, including immune-mediated beta cell injury.
• Human implementation pilot studies to reverse type 2 diabetes through physical activity and nutrition. Welcoming applications that include researchers with expertise in social sciences, in addition to biomedical researchers. Social scientists can bring an understanding of, for example, individual behaviour, economic evaluations, inequalities, the wider political economy, and wider environmental influences.
• This is meant to focus on research applicable to UK and Canadian settings, not to global health.

For more information on this pre-call announcement please visit the MRC website.

If you would like to apply for this call then please get in touch with your Research Development Team!

GCRF: High level details of 2019 calls announced

UKRI have announced themes for a suite of calls to be launched in 2019 under the UKRI GCRF Collective Programme.

The Programme will reach across the six strategic GCRF Challenge portfolios (global health, education, sustainable cities, food systems, conflict and displacement and resilience), and calls will be launched throughout 2019.

Calls will be led via specific Research Councils on behalf of UKRI as a whole, and steered by challenge leaders.

Themes for calls will be:

Cities and Sustainable Infrastructure

• GCRF (Re)thinking the off-grid city
• GCRF Sustainable energy and international development: beyond technology

Education

• GCRF Education as a driver of sustainable development Network Plus
• GCRF Education in conflict and crisis research
• GCRF Education Interventions for Early Childhood Development

Food Systems

• GCRF Cultures and histories of agriculture, food, and nutrition
• GCRF A combined Food Systems approach to developing interventions to address the Double Burden of Malnutrition

Global Health

• GCRF Health and Communities

Resilience to Environmental Shocks and Change

• GCRF Equitable Resilience: ensuring resilience enhances the Sustainable Development Goals
• GCRF Multiple and systemic Risks

Security Protracted Conflict, Refugee Crises and Forced Displacement

• GCRF Development-based approaches to Protracted Displacement
• GCRF Preventing Conflict, Building Sustainable and Inclusive Peace
• GCRF Protection in Contexts of Conflict and Displacement

Calls that cut across the portfolios

• GCRF Coherence Grants
• GCRF Gender and Intersectionality Network Plus
• GCRF Global Engagement Networks

Details have been launched regarding the Global Engagement Networks call (Deadline 14 February 2019), and we are expecting further announcements this week about other calls, so keep your eyes on the Blog.

(Ed – AHRC are already advertising their leadership of  various calls, and an indication of the types of project that willl be supported – e.g. networks, partnership building and research programmes).

As ever, if you’re interested in calls, please contact your Research Development Manager or International Research Development Manager as early as possible for advice and support.

 

 

 

ESRC Secondary Data Analysis – changes to eligibility including increase in £ and project duration

As of 17 May 2018, eligibility criteria for the ESRC Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (SDAI) will be changing.

Since December 2015, SDAI has operated alongside ESRC’s Research Grants open call. Following ESRC’s internal review of the Initiative, including an analysis of the volume and review outcomes of applications received so far, along with feedback from external stakeholders, it was concluded that changes to the Initiative were needed to improve the quantity and quality of proposals submitted.

As a result, the following changes to the SDAI have been introduced and will apply as of 17 May 2018:

• The maximum funding threshold for applications will increase from £200,000 (100% fEC) to £300,000 (100% fEC)
• The maximum duration of proposals will increase from 18 months to 24 months.
• Previous eligibility criteria to (a) use only one of ESRC-funded data resources and (b) to include at least one named early career researcher as principal investigator or co-investigator have been relaxed.
• Instead, as of 17 May, the ESRC will welcome proposals that aim to exploit secondary data from a range of UK and international data resources funded by ESRC and by other agencies, given sufficient justification and confirmation.
• ESRC will continue to encourage applications that include a named early career researcher as principal investigator or co-investigator and/or applications that seek to use one or more ESRC-funded data resources.

These changes to the eligibility criteria will allow applicants greater flexibility when utilising existing UK and international data resources to deliver high-quality and high-impact research. This also provides a huge opportunity for comparative analysis into some of the most pressing challenges facing society in the UK and internationally.

Please see

https://esrc.ukri.org/funding/funding-opportunities/secondary-data-analysis-initiative-sdai-open-call/

 

Urban Europe: Europe-China Joint Call – internal expressions of interest required

This is an important post for those of you who may be considering an application to the latest Urban Europe call: Europe-China Joint Call: Sustainable and Liveable Cities and Urban Areas.

The ESRC (who fund the UK’s participation) have announced demand management measures for the call.

From the ESRC’s guidance: “It is our expectation that applicants will seek to improve the quality and regulate the volume of proposals coming from the same Research Organisation in the UK before they are submitted to this call, ensuring that only those deemed to have the highest chance of success are submitted. We expect applicants to use internal institutional pre-submission review and quality control mechanisms to achieve this. A UK applicant, can be involved in a maximum of two proposals, but can only be the Main Applicant on one proposal. A person can be a Co-applicant (and the lead for a UK component) on a maximum of two proposals.”

In order to comply with this requirement, we would like to invite expressions of interest from those of you who may be considering a submission to this call either as a partner or as lead by 9 March 2018.

An EoI form can be obtained from RKE Directorate via euro_res@mmu.ac.uk and potential applicants are asked not to register their interest via Urban Europe’s website at this point.