Category / Funding opportunities

UK Research Councils join forces on mental health

Funding opportunities

The UK’s seven research councils have announced they will be working together to encourage and strengthen mental health research. Mental health is recognised as a major societal challenge that requires novel cross-disciplinary research approaches, that is, research that spans more than one branch of specialist knowledge. They have published a new research agenda, paving the way for cross-council collaboration on mental health in the years ahead. Following the publication of the research agenda, a cross council call will be launched in early September 2017.

In 2016 an expert group was set up to advise the research councils on the development of a new mental health research agenda to strengthen cross-disciplinary research. The group was made up of leading academics in the field of mental health. It considered specific research areas that could be tackled through cross-disciplinary work and across the individual remits of each research council. A wider group was also consulted, including academics, funders, mental health charities, representatives of end users of research and service user organisations.

It is estimated that 23% of the UK population is affected by mental health problems at some point each year. In spite of recent progress, more research is needed to better understand how to prevent, diagnose and treat mental illness. Only about a quarter of people with a mental health problem are deemed to receive ongoing treatment, leaving the majority grappling with mental health issues seeking help or information on their own, and depending on the informal support of family, friends or colleagues.

You can view the new mental health research agenda here .

RKEO will publish on the blog the calls related to this agenda; with the first expected in September.  BU academics are well-placed to submit to upcoming calls.  Watch this space!

HE Policy update w/e 25th August 2017

Funding opportunities, Fusion, innovation, international

Immigration, International Students and Brexit

The government have commissioned a series of assessments and reviews of the impact of immigration policy and Brexit via the Migration Advisory Committee:

  • Call for evidence and briefing note: EEA-workers in the UK labour market – we will be responding on the HE questions via UCEA and UUK and we are considering a regional response, please let Sarah or I know if you have evidence that would be relevant to this – it is looking at EEA migration trends, recruitment practices and economic and social impacts.
  • a detailed assessment of the social and economic impact of international students in the UK. We would expect a call for evidence for this to follow. Looking at both EU and non-EU students, the MAC will be asked to consider:
  • the impact of tuition fees and other spending by international students on the national, regional, and local economy and on the education sector
  • the role students play in contributing to local economic growth
  • the impact their recruitment has on the provision and quality of education provided to domestic students.

The Commissioning Letter from Amber Rudd says: “The Digital Economy Act provides a unique opportunity to improve understanding of the migration data and as part of this work the Home Office will be working with the ONS and other Government departments to improve the use of administrative data. This will lead to a greater understanding of how many migrants are in the UK, how long they stay for, and what they are currently doing. The ONS will be publishing an article in September setting out this fuller work plan and the timetable for moving towards this landscape for administrative data usage”

As well as the post-Brexit future of students, the letter also makes reference to the Tier 4 visa pilot which was launched last year and included a handful of universities. Amber Rudd says “the pilot is being carefully evaluated and, if successful, could be rolled out more widely”.

The pilot covered masters courses at 4 universities:

  • Masters course for 13 months or less at the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of Bath or Imperial College London.
  • Participating in the pilot allowed students to:
    • stay for six months after the end of the course;
    • submit fewer evidential documents with their applications – e.g. previous qualifications and documents relating to maintenance requirements

A deluge of other data and reports gave also been published:

  • The Home Office has published its second report on statistics being collected under the exit checks programme – Exit checks data.
    • For the 1.34m visas granted to non-EEA nationals and which expired in 2016/17, where individuals did not obtain a further extension to stay longer in the UK, 96.3% departed in time (that is before their visa expired)
  • A National Statistics update has been published which gives a breakdown of all the data
  • Additional analysis by Office for National Statistics (ONS) on international students, has been published
  • The Centre for Population Change has published the findings of a survey it carried out in March 2017 in partnership with the ONS and UUK. The survey looked at the intentions of graduating overseas students and found:
  • The majority of students do not intend to stay in the UK for more than a year after finishing their studies (and those that stated they intended to stay were not certain of their post-study plans, particularly non-EU students).
  • Fewer than one in ten international students plan to stay in the UK indefinitely and find a job.

According to UUK:

  • Exit checks data shows that student overstaying is at worst 3% and much of the 3% of undetermined outcomes may be due to individuals leaving via routes where there are no exit checks currently (such as via the Common Travel Area). This means student visa compliance is at least 97%, far higher than previous (incorrect) claims.
  • The Home Office exit checks data provides a more accurate picture (than the International Passenger Survey – IPS) of what non-EU students do after their initial period of leave to study
  • The ONS report suggest that the IPS is likely to underestimate student emigration – therefore any implied student net migration figure is likely to be an overestimate
  • The ONS also commits to working with colleagues across the government statistics service to utilise all available administrative systems to further improve migration statistics. They have also asked for UUK’s input to this work.

Widening Participation

A survey of access agreements has been published this week by the Office for Fair Access. In their press release OFFA note that every university has committed to working with schools to help increase access to HE. The report also notes that universities will focus on improved evaluation of the impact of financial support and an evidence based approach more generally, a specific focus on White working class males and BME attainment, and more support for mental health issues.  The amount universities spend on widening access will rise.

Responding to the survey, UUK Chief Executive, Alistair Jarvis, said: “The enhancements in support provided by universities has helped to increase the entry rate for disadvantaged young people to record levels. All UK universities work hard to widen participation and support disadvantaged students throughout their time at university. It is right to expect a continued focus on support for disadvantaged students to make further progress in closing the gap between different student groups.”

Industrial Strategy

The formal outcome of the Industrial Strategy consultation is still pending. However, there has been a reasonable amount of activity in the meantime and we thought it might be helpful to do a round up.

Clusters – The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have set up a Creative Industries Clusters Programme, starting in 2018, to facilitate collaboration between the industry and universities. The pre-call announcement sets out the plan for at least 8 research and development partnerships, each led by an HEI, and a Policy and Evidence Centre. Calls will apparently open in October 2018.

Sector deals – As part of the Industrial strategy green paper, the government announced that there were 5 sector reviews taking place and suggested that they would welcome more.

Other organisations are setting up consultations and other reviews to respond to the Industrial Strategy, such as:

The interim findings of the industrial digitalisation review are interesting – they are working on a final report for the autumn of 2017:

  • It highlights a need for more leadership – with “much stronger marketing and messaging” and proposed the establishment of a Digital Technology Institute and Digital Technology Networks
  • It discusses issues with adoption rates for technology, particularly among SMEs and suggests better support for businesses via LEPs and other organisations, work on skills through interventions such as an Institute of Digital Engineering
  • Innovation – the interim review suggests looking at additive manufacturing and AI – and creating new industries in autonomous operations, but also providing kite marked content for businesses.

Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund – Innovate UK are running the Industrial strategy Challenge Fund – in April 2017 they identified 6 “core industrial challenges”:

Interesting reading

JANE FORSTER                                            |                       SARAH CARTER

Policy Advisor                                                                     Policy & Public Affairs Officer

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Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter                        |                       policy@bournemouth.ac.uk

Amends to NERC Research grant eligibility for New Investigators

Funding opportunities, Guidance

The eligibility for the NERC New Investigators scheme has been updated from three to five years of applicants first becoming eligible for NERC funding as a Principal Investigator. This applies from the January 2018 closing date. See: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/application/eligibility/

Grants and Fellowships Handbook – A new version of the NERC grants and fellowships handbook is now available on their website at: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/application/howtoapply/forms/grantshandbook/

 

Changes to British Academy grant submission system

Funding opportunities

The British Academy have used e-GAP as their application submission system for a number of years.  They have now changed to Flexi-Grant.

If you have previously registered with eGAP, your account has been migrated to the new grant management platform, Flexi-Grant®. Before you can log in to Flexi-Grant®, you will need to reset your password as your existing eGAP password will not work.  View this page and click on ‘Reset eGAP password’ to access the new system.  If you have never registered for eGAP then you can create an account on Flexi-Grant by clicking on ‘register’ in the ‘Get Involved’ section of the same page.

You will have to register for an account on Flexi-Grant in order to apply to any future British Academy funding opportunities.  Applicants who have submitted an application through eGAP and are still awaiting a result should be able to review progress through the new system.

If you are unsure of what to do then please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer for advice.

2017 Industrial Innovation Fellowships and Industrial Mobility Fellowships

Funding opportunities

RCUK (UKRI) have announced that up to 24 Industrial Innovation Fellowships for Early Career Researchers will be supported as part of the National Productivity Fund.  NERC will be delivering the fellowships as Industrial Innovations Fellowships and Industrial Mobility Fellowships. Successful applicants will be expected to commence their fellowships by the 1st of January 2018 at the latest.

The Industrial Innovations fellowships are 3.5 year awards for a single named researcher.  The Industrial Mobility Fellowships are 6-12 month fellowships that enable ECRs to spend time exploring interdisciplinary solutions while placed within industry. Both fund must have research clearly aligned with one or more of the challenge areas of the governments Industrial Strategy of:

  • Clean energy;
  • Robotics and AI;
  • Satellites and space;
  • Leading edge healthcare and medicine;
  • Manufacturing and materials;
  • Biotechnology and synthetic biology;
  • Transformative digital technologies (including big data and analytics);
  • Quantum technologies;
  • Technologies for the creative industries;
  • Building a resilient economy.

A total fund of £8.86m is available for the Industrial Innovations Fellowships and there are no specific funding limits to applicants other than a restriction that no equipment cost may exceed £10k. Industrial Mobility Fellowships are anticipated to have budgets between £50k-100k depending on the duration of the award.

For further information, or to check the suitability of these funds, please contact your faculty Research Facilitator (Ehren Milner, emilner@bournemouth.ac.uk or Lisa Gale-Andrews,  lgaleandrews@bournemouth.ac.uk).

 

Research funding available for the economic and social value of health in the UK

Funding opportunities

The Health Foundation, an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK, has launched a new £1.5 million funding programme for innovative research on the economic and social value of health in the UK.

They are inviting researchers to submit research proposals that build the evidence for health as an asset for the economy and society, and generate new knowledge to understand the impact that the health of an individual has on their own social and economic outcomes.

They are looking to fund a number of projects that span a range of age groups and different social and economic outcomes.

Each project will receive between £150,000 and £350,000 for research that is up to three years in duration.

The closing date for applications is 12 noon, Friday 29 September 2017.

For more information, and to apply, see here.

An information call for the programme will be held on Thursday 17 August at 4pm. Register your interest here.

AHRC New Generation Thinkers scheme 2018

Funding opportunities

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have launched their annual competition, in conjunction with BBC Radio 3, called ‘New Generation Thinkers’.

This competition aims to develop a new generation of academics who can bring the best of university research and scholarly ideas to a broad audience through working with the media. It’s a chance for early career researchers to cultivate the skills to communicate their research findings to those outside the academic community.

Each year, up to 60 successful applicants have a chance to develop their media skills, including programme-making ideas with experienced BBC producers at a series of dedicated workshops. Of these up to ten will become BBC Radio 3’s resident New Generation Thinkers and benefit from a unique opportunity to develop their own programmes for the station and a chance to regularly appear on air. There will also be the possibility of working with BBC TV, a number of speak opportunities and the chance to become a regular blogger.

Applicants are welcome from researchers working in all areas of the arts and humanities. This year the call has been extended for researchers who work in areas of social sciences and medical science whose work intersects with the arts and humanities. There are a series of interfaces, and many areas of common ground between. This scheme is open to researchers whose work intersects with arts and humanities and is not restricted to AHRC researchers.

To enter, please see the Call Guidance (PDF, 233KB) and Conditions of Entry (PDF, 108KB). Entries must be submitted via Je-S. If you are interested in applying, please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer in the first instance.  BU approval is required before submission and only RKEO can submit your application for you.

NERC standard grants (January 18 deadline) – internal competition launched

Funding opportunities

NERC introduced demand management measures in 2012. These were revised in 2015 to reduce the number and size of applications from research organisations for NERC’s discovery science standard grant scheme. Full details can be found in the BU policy document for NERC demand management measures at: http://intranetsp.bournemouth.ac.uk/policy/BU Policy for NERC Demand Management Measures.docx.

As at March 2015, BU has been capped at one application per standard grant round. The measures only apply to NERC standard grants (including new investigators). An application counts towards an organisation, where the organisation is applying as the grant holding organisation (of the lead or component grant). This will be the organisation of the Principal Investigator of the lead or component grant.

BU process

As a result, BU has introduced a process for determining which application will be submitted to each NERC Standard Grant round. This will take the form of an internal competition, which will include peer review. The next available standard grant round is January 2018. The process for selecting an application for this round can be found in the process document here – the deadline for internal Expressions of Interest (EoI) which will be used to determine which application will be submitted is 22nd September 2017.  The EoI form can be found here: I:\R&KEO\Public\NERC Demand Management 2017.

NERC have advised that where a research organisation submits more applications to any round than allowed under the cap, NERC will office-reject any excess applications, based purely on the time of submission through the Je-S system (last submitted = first rejected). However, as RKEO submit applications through Je-S on behalf of applicants, RKEO will not submit any applications that do not have prior agreement from the internal competition.

Following the internal competition, the Principal Investigator will have access to support from RKEO, and will work closely with the Research Facilitator and Funding Development Officers to develop the application. Access to external bid writers will also be available.

Appeals process

If an EoI is not selected to be submitted as an application, the Principal Investigator can appeal to Professor Tim McIntyre-Bhatty, Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Any appeals must be submitted within ten working days of the original decision. All appeals will be considered within ten working days of receipt.

RKEO Contacts

Please contact Lisa Gale-Andrews, RKEO Research Facilitator – lgaleandrews@bournemouth.ac.uk or Jo Garrad, RKEO Funding Development Manager – jgarrad@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to submit an expression of interest.

RCUK (UKRI) 2017 Industrial Fellowships

Funding opportunities

RCUK (UKRI) 2017 Industrial Fellowships – NERC closing date 19th September 2017.

In response to the Industrial Strategy, Research Councils UK (RCUK) (UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)) has developed a fellowship programme to be supported through the National Productivity Investment Fund. Targeted at early career researchers (ECRs), RCUK / UKRI Industrial Innovation Fellowships will be a step change in the support provided by the research councils to the research leaders of the future, enabling some of the UK’s most talented researchers to undertake major new innovation oriented and intellectual endeavours.

For applicants within NERC’s science remit, NERC will be delivering these fellowships through Industrial Innovation Fellowships and Industrial Mobility Fellowships

Three-and-a-half-year awards to support early career researchers in exploring interdisciplinary solutions as well as addressing focused sectoral needs, both in the short term and long term, to the economic benefit of the UK.

NERC invites proposals for mobility fellowship awards of between 6-12 months in duration aligned with the objectives of the Industrial Strategy.

If you have any queries concerning these programmes, please contact fellowships@nerc.ac.uk

If you wish to apply for a fellowship then please contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer in the first instance.

JPICH Heritage in Changing Environments pre-call announcement

Funding opportunities, international

The Joint Programming Initiative in Cultural Heritage and Global Change has announced a new funding opportunity for transnational proposals. The Heritage in Changing Environments call will support the development of new, research-based ideas and knowledge in response to the rapidly and widely changing context with which heritage and heritage practice is faced. It invites research projects that help cultural heritage to meet societal challenges and contribute to the development of society. The call aims to fund excellent research that is collaborative, transnational, interdisciplinary and innovative. The total budget for the call for transnational projects is approximately 4.5 million Euros.

The Call for Proposals will open on 4th September 2017 and the deadline for submission of proposals will be 30th November 2017, 14:00 CET.

Projects can last up to 36 months with 3-5 research teams, each based in an eligible institution in a different country. Detailed eligibility requirements and more information can be found on the JPICH website.

 

UKRI launch website

Funding opportunities

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has launched an interim website .

The website will be a source to access information and news about the development of the UKRI ahead of its formal creation in April 2018. UKRI will operate across the UK and will have a total budget of £6 billion per year. It will bring together the Research Councils, Innovate UK and a new body, Research England.

£80m for the Creative Industries Clusters Programme

Funding opportunities

The AHRC have announced that £80m will be made available through the AHRC as part of the Governments Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) to support eight research and development partnerships between industry and a group of universities to respond to challenges identified by the creative industries in 2018.  The pre-call document may be found here.

It is expected that the call for proposals to host the Policy and Evidence Centre in relation to this fund will by made available in October 2017.

For further information, please contact Ehren Milner (emilner@bournemouth.ac.uk).