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/

 

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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.

ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre Innovation Fund

The ESRC Consumer Data Research Centre is inviting proposals from UK-based academics for projects that will capitalise on their core consumer data sets, extend their network of partners, and drive forward substantive and innovative social science research across a broad range of disciplines and research areas.

They are inviting proposals that contribute to their research themes, as well as extensions into other research areas of strategic significance, including those aligned with ESRC’s priorities in:

• Mental Health
• Housing
• Productivity
• Understanding the Macro-Economy
• Ways of Being in a Digital Age

The Centre is looking to fund in the region of 8-10 projects, each valued at between £20,000-£60,000 (100% fEC). Projects will run from early October 2017 and must be completed no later than the end of September 2018.

Deadline for Applications: 5pm 31st July 2017.

For more information, please visit the Consumer Data Research Centre.

AHRC-ESRC-FCO Knowledge Exchange Fellowship Scheme

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) are pleased to invite applications to the AHRC-ESRC-FCO Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowships scheme.

The scheme will provide the opportunity for each intake of fellows to be seconded into the FCO to work alongside, advise and influence policymakers.

The fellowship scheme will go beyond current ad hoc arrangements, create deeper engagement between academia and policy, impact on diplomacy, increase the professional reputation of participating scholars and build long term, two way relationships. The benefits will flow to the wider academic community through fellows’ engagement with their home research organisation and wider research communities as well as through a dedicated policy seminar series hosted by the FCO during the lifetime of the scheme.

Deadline for Applications: 31st October 2017

For more information, please visit the ESRC.

Sustainable Urbanisation – European Funding Opportunity

 

The Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe (JPI Urban Europe) in partnership with the Belmont Forum have announced details of a new funding scheme open to a range of European and international countries. The Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative – Food-Water-Energy Nexus (SUGI-FWE Nexus for short) will look for multinational, interdisciplinary partnerships engaging with key stakeholders to investigate one of three areas:

• Robust Knowledge, Indicators and  Assessments
• Multi-level Governance and Management of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus
• Managing Potential Strategies and Solutions to address emerging Risk and Trade-offs at the intersection of Sustainable Urbanisation and the Food-Water-Energy Nexus

The call will have two stages, with pre-proposals requested by 15 March 2017 and full proposals (by invitation) by 20 September 2017. The UK element of this call (totalling €1.7m) will be supported by Innovate UK, AHRC and ESRC and fund fundamental research, applied research and innovation and implementation activities.

You can find more information about the call here (including presentations and application forms) and the full call text here. There will also be a “matchmaking event” in Leipzig on 12 January 2017.

As ever, if you’re interested in applying do get in touch (euro_res@mmu.ac.uk).

ESRC-DFID Development Frontiers Research Fund call open

A new funding opportunity is being launched as part of a decade-long partnership between the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) which aims to place innovation and appetite for risk at the centre of world-class research.

Sitting within the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research, the Development Frontiers Research Fund aims to fund innovative, strategic and catalytic research with the potential to radically impact on sustainable development concepts or practices, or lead to new thinking and action on poverty reduction.

Proposals are invited for projects with a full economic cost (fEC) value between£200,000 and £300,000. Projects can be between 12 and 18 months long, but must finish no later than 31 March 2019. They expect to fund around 14-18 awards, depending on the quality of the proposals received.

This call has been designed to enable researchers to conduct exploratory, small-scale projects with a view to developing ideas, collaboration, and research capacity for future larger grants for other calls, whether to ESRC or DFID or other funders. This second call within the Development Frontiers Research Fund will support innovative, interdisciplinary research that is focused on new ways to tackle the challenges encountered at the intersections between poverty, environmental sustainability and conflict/fragility in specific developing country contexts

West Africa:Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sao Tome, and Principe Togo

Horn of Africa: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan

South/Southeast Asia: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines ,Timor Leste

This call is open to proposals from researchers based anywhere in the world. A requirement of this call is that at least one developing country researcher and at least one early career researcher must be included in the research team, either as principal investigator or co-investigator

NOTE: Eligible research organisations from the UK and other developed countries can lead on a maximum of up to two proposals to this call so, if you are interested, please get in touch with your Research Development Manager a.s.a.p.

http://www.esrc.ac.uk/funding/funding-opportunities/esrc-dfid-development-frontiers-research-fund-2016-17/

 

ESRC Support for Early Career Researchers

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is to enhance and improve its support for early career researchers at three distinct stages:

• Doctoral
• Immediately Postdoctorate
• Transition to Independent Researcher

Postdoctoral Fellowships will be made available to ESRC and non-ESRC funded doctoral graduates who are within one year of completing their PhD and will give them the opportunity to consolidate their PhD through developing publications, their networks, and their research and professional skills.

ESRC are also introducing a New Investigator scheme, which replaces the Future Research Leaders scheme. This new strand of our existing Research Grants scheme will provide early career researchers with the opportunity to lead their first major research grant and gain experience of managing a research project and team. The scheme has an open deadline for submission.

Other new developments include:

• Ensuring that all ESRC grant holders set out, at the application stage, how they will support postdoctoral researchers’ continuing professional development.
• Commissioning an international comparative review of the nature of the PhD in the social sciences – to establish the extent to which PhDs provide effective preparation for careers both within and beyond academia, and whether our doctoral graduates are competitive internationally.
• Encouraging early career researchers to participate in other ESRC funding schemes, for example, requiring them to be included as co-investigators.

For more information, please visit ESRC.