ISRF Mid-Career & Political Economy Fellowship Competitions

Launched today the ISRF have opened two fellowship schemes, the Mid-Career Fellowship and the Political Economy Fellowship.

ISRF MID-CAREER FELLOWSHIP COMPETITION (MCF5)

The Independent Social Research Foundation wishes to support independent-minded researchers to explore and present original research ideas which take new approaches, and suggest new solutions, to real world social problems.

The Foundation intends to make a small number of awards to support original interdisciplinary research, across the range of the social sciences, to be held from a start date no later than the end of December 2021. Scholars from within Europe are eligible to apply.

The award is intended to enable a scholar at the mid-career stage to pursue their research full-time, for a period of up to 12 months; applications may be made by those whose sole or principal post is a part-time equivalent. The amount will be offered to buy out the costs of replacing all teaching and associated administration in the applicant’s home institution, and will be considered to a maximum of £70,000 per successful applicant. Within that sum, reasonable support for research expenses may be considered on a matched-funding basis with the host institution.

The applicant should normally hold a salaried position at an institution of higher education and research, and be 10 years or more from the year of their PhD award. However, a shorter time from PhD award may exceptionally be considered, if the candidate has other qualifications to be considered as mid-career.

Launch: 06th January 2020
Deadline: 14th February 2020

ISRF POLITICAL ECONOMY FELLOWSHIP COMPETITION (PERF4)

The Independent Social Research Foundation wishes to support independent-minded researchers working in Political Economy, which the ISRF here extends to include the social scientific study of economies across the whole range of the social sciences. The work would be conceptually innovative, interdisciplinary, and unlikely to be funded by existing funding bodies.

The Foundation intends to make a small number of awards to support independent-minded researchers working in Political Economy – which the ISRF here extends to include the social scientific study of economies across the whole range of the social sciences – to be held from a start date no later than the end of December 2021. Scholars from within Europe are eligible to apply.

The award is intended intended as providing full relief from all teaching duties and all associated academic administration, for a period of up to 12 months; applications may be made by those whose sole or principal post is a part-time equivalent. The amount will be offered to buy out the costs of replacing all teaching and associated administration in the applicant’s home institution, and will be considered to a maximum of £70,000 per successful applicant. Within that sum, reasonable support for research expenses may be considered on a matched-funding basis with the host institution.

Launch: 06th January 2020
Deadline: 14th February 2020

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Please contact the research office at researchapplications@mmu.ac.uk if you have any questions or are interested in this opportunity

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/

 

HPSC Grant Application Workshop Reminder

Members of the Health, Psychology and Social Care Faculty are invited to attend a Research Grant Application Workshop hosted by your Research Development Team.

The event has been designed for Academic members of staff who are eligible to apply for external research funding and plan on applying within the next 6 months – this includes Research Fellows on permanent contracts.

• Date: Wednesday 27th November
• Time: 12 – 4pm
• Location: Brooks Building
• Registration: Via Eventbrite.

To register for this free event please complete the form on the linked Eventbrite Page. You will be required to confirm your eligibility, give a brief summary of your planned research and funder and provide a question that you would like to ask our academic panel.

For further details please visit the Event Page or contact your Research Development Team.

Please note: This event is open to members of Health, Psychology and Social Care only.

HPSC Research Grant Application Workshop

Members of the Health, Psychology and Social Care Faculty are invited to attend a Research Grant Application Workshop hosted by your Research Development Team.

The event has been designed for Academic members of staff who are eligible to apply for external research funding and plan on applying within the next 6 months – this includes Research Fellows on permanent contracts.

• Date: Wednesday 27th November
• Time: 12 – 4pm
• Location: Brooks Building
• Registration: Via Eventbrite.

To register for this free event please complete the form on the linked Eventbrite Page. You will be required to confirm your eligibility, give a brief summary of your planned research and funder and provide a question that you would like to ask our academic panel.

For further details please visit the Event Page or contact your Research Development Team.

Please note: This event is open to members of Health, Psychology and Social Care only.

Pre-Call notification: SOLSTICE Enabling Societal Transformation in the Face of Climate Change

SOLSTICE seeks interdisciplinary contributions from consortia led by Social Sciences and Humanities who will address societal aspects of climate change. Given the pressing nature of global climate change, SOLSTICE aims at producing knowledge that can have an impact on society and policy; impact should not be limited to scientific publications, but should have the potential to trigger change in behavior and attitudes at any level of society.

The call will address three themes:

• Social justice and participation
• Sense making, cultural meaning and risk perception
• Transformative finance and economy

The rationale of this call can be found in the JPI Climate White Paper “Operationalizing knowledge on and for societal transformation in the face of climate change”.

This call also seeks to attract scientists who work in disciplines that are typically not associated with climate change research in order to develop innovative approaches and combinations of disciplines.

Consortia should consist of scientists from at least three participating countries.

The following countries are interested in participating in this call: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, United Kingdom

The list of participating countries is not final and may be subject to change until the official call announcement 5 October 2019. The submission deadline is foreseen for 9 January 2020.  Please note that call announcement and submission deadline dates are not confirmed and may be subject to change

http://www.jpi-climate.eu/news-events/news/10899264/Call-pre-announcement-SOLSTICE-Enabling-Societal-Transformation-in-the-Face-of-Climate-Change

 

Thinking of a Nuffield Foundation bid? Tips from an a grant winner

 

This article is taken from Research Professional’s Research Insight service and Research Fortnight so thanks to them.

Partnerships and impact should be at the base of a Nuffield Foundation bid

Nuffield Foundation Grants for Research, Development and Analysis support projects that improve the design and operation of social policy, especially in education, welfare and justice.

Grants range from £10,000 to £500,000, but most are worth between £50,000 and £300,000. The foundation has said it expects the deadline for outline applications to the next round to be in September.

Here, Gráinne McKeever, a professor of law and social justice at Ulster University, speaks about her 2016 Nuffield grants for studying litigants in person: people who represent themselves in the Northern Ireland court system.

What was the background to your bid? I had just completed a pilot project on the topic funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme. Around that time, the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland published a major review of access to justice, which highlighted the need for more research on the position of litigants in person. The policy context coincided perfectly with the direction of my research.

What attracted you to Nuffield? It had previously funded tribunal reform research I had done for the Law Centre in Northern Ireland, so I knew it was interested in how the legal system works for ordinary people and how the values of the legal system play out. It was also clear that it would fund research on Northern Ireland as one of the jurisdictions in the UK—you can’t assume this with all funders.

What’s more, the application process is a tailored, staged system. It’s not one of those processes where you leap in, do eight weeks of work on a massive application and then you either get it or not. It’s more manageable.

Was there a fit with Nuffield’s priorities? Yes. The type of research we were proposing had the potential to generate evidence-based reform. We knew Nuffield was not a funder for blue-sky research—it wants to make a difference on the ground.

Did you consider any other funders? Not seriously. The Nuffield Foundation was our first port of call. I’ve done some work for the Legal Education Foundation in the past, who are also good to work with. If we hadn’t been successful with Nuffield, we might have approached them.

Did you work with any partner organisations? It was a joint bid with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and largely thanks to that, I knew that the stakeholder engagement section was going to be strong. Together with the chief commissioner of the Human Rights Commission I met the lord chief justice, the head of the Department of Justice of Northern Ireland and the head of the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service, to see if they would facilitate the research if we got the grant. Getting their buy-in at an early stage was essential.

What is the first stage of the application process? Applicants submit a brief outline application, which is an opportunity to refine your thinking to identify a good research idea and start to set out how it might be delivered. Nuffield gave us feedback at that stage saying, “We think you could do more on this and for that reason we think your budget might not be sufficient.”

It’s not my experience that a funder will come back and say you need to ask them for more money, but they were keen to make sure we maximised the project’s potential.

What elements did you bring to the fore in the full application? While some funders may be more interested in developing an in-depth theoretical understanding of an issue, Nuffield is more interested in improving society. So that was an important part of our application. In particular, we were keen to emphasise the value that the Human Rights Commission would bring to the project. They provided a legal advice clinic that as academics we wouldn’t have been able to do in the same way.

Do you have any tips for future applicants? Remember that Nuffield wants to make a difference. Impact planning really is intrinsic to the research that Nuffield has funded for us. We didn’t just do it to get a grant and produce a report. We did it because we could see very clearly that there was a chance to make a difference.

What else is Nuffield looking for? Another important aspect is partnership working. Our project has just been extended through another major grant from Nuffield and we’re now going to be working with the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service and others to provide support materials for personal litigants in family law cases.

For Nuffield, partnership is not just about working with an organisation to get their ideas. Being able to engage with an organisation on the ground that can sustain and add greater value to the research is something Nuffield has been very keen for us to do.

It’s also important to engage seriously with the feedback. Talk to people who have done other work in your area and get their feedback on your draft application.

https://www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/news/uk/careers/2019/6/Firm-foundations.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=rpMailing&utm_campaign=researchFortnightNews_2019-06-26

Standing up for Science Workshops

Sense about Science will be running a free workshop ‘Standing up for Science‘ which allows you to find out how to make your voice heard in public debates about science and evidence.

Location: University of Manchester

Date: Friday 29th March 10am – 5pm

Register: Free via the website (here) deadline for registration is Thursday 28th Feb

This is a full-day event where you can meet other researchers who have experience with public engagement, learn from policymakers about how evidence can inform policy and speak with respected science journalists to find out what journalists expect from scientists and researchers. You can also find out how to involve the public in communicating your research – great for Impact and Public Involvement!

The event is free (although registration is required) and is aimed at STEM and social science early-career researchers (PhD students, post-docs welcome) and medical professionals.

For more details please visit the website.

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/

 

Wellcome Trust Seed Award – Can AI Improve Healthcare for Everyone?

Wellcome Trust have announced a new Seed Award, in Humanities and Social Science, around the theme of artificial intelligence focusing on the ethical, social and political challenges of using artificial intelligence in healthcare and biomedical research.

Funding Amount: £25,000 – £100,000

Duration: 12 – 18 months

Wellcome highlights ten areas of particular interest where they believe new research is needed:

• What effect will AI have on human relationships in health and care?
• How is the use, storage and sharing of medical data impacted by AI?
• What are the implications of issues around algorithmic transparency and explainability on health?
• Will these technologies help eradicate or exacerbate existing health inequalities?
• What is the difference between an algorithmic decision and a human decision?
• What do patients and members of the public want from AI and related technologies?
• How should these technologies be regulated?
• Just because these technologies could enable access to new information, should we always use it?
• What makes algorithms, and the entities that create them, trustworthy?
• What are the implications of collaborations between public and private sector organisations in the development of these tools?

Your proposal may address one of the questions above or something along a similar topic.

For more information about the award please visit the Wellcome Trust website.

If you’d like to apply for this award then please get in touch with Research Development via our email.

 

The application deadline is  26th June.

EqUIP call for Collaborative Research on Sustainability, Equity, Wellbeing and Cultural Connections

Pre-call announcement

The EU-India Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (EqUIP) is pleased to pre-announce its first research funding call.

The call aims to bring together social science and humanities funders in India and Europe to support excellent and innovative research on sustainability, equity, wellbeing and cultural connections. The emphasis of the research will be on Indian and European dimensions, in both contemporary and historical contexts.

With a total funding of €5.5 million, it is expected that six projects will be funded. Researchers from India, Finland, France, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, and the UK are invited to apply. Further European countries may also be announced shortly.

Research proposals should focus on societal challenges facing both India and the respective European countries, with suggested themes including, but not limited to, sustainability, equity, wellbeing and cultural connections. Funders strongly encourage interdisciplinary approaches across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) to address the themes of this call.

Each proposal under this call will require the building of consortia of three or more research groups based in three or more different countries participating in the call and be eligible for the funding from their national funding agencies. Every proposal must involve representation from India eligible for funding by the participating Indian funding agencies. In the case of the UK the research group can consist of an individual researcher or group of researchers.

The call for proposals is expected to open end of August 2017.

For more information, please visit the AHRC.