Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Knowing what kind of grant you should go for can be a little tricky when you start your academic career. The ESRC have produced this very handy diagram which outlines at what stage you should ideally submit proposals for different types of grants and values.
If you need any help or advice on what types of grant to go for, come and speak to us in R&KEO.
The ESRC has just posted on their website the news that the call for applications for the 2013 Festival has been delayed.
They now anticipate that the call will open on 15 April with a closing date of 13 May for applications requesting funding support of up to £2,000, and 7 May for applications to hold an event and not requesting funding. This means that the call for applications will be open for only four weeks. The message from the ESRC is to start planning your event as soon as possible.
BU held four events as part of the 2012 Festival. Our successful applicants were: Kip Jones, Richard Shipway, Debbie Sadd, Ruth Towse and Martin Kretschmer. This is what Debbie has to say about being part of the Festival:
“It is a wonderful opportunity to start a bidding journey and gain confidence in ‘winning’ some money!! The process was very straight forward and the support from the ESRC invaluable. The event itself was a resounding success.”
Looking for inspiration? Clicking on the following links will take you to the posters that were designed for each event, which may give you some ideas for your own event.
Copyright Policy, Going for Gold, London 2012 Was it Worth it, Pathways to Impact
Want to find out more?
Click here to find out more information about the call and the ESRC Festival of Science in general.
Interested in applying?
Please contact Caroline O’Kane as soon as possible if you are interested in applying.
Exciting new funding opportunities are now available with the retail sector!
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have recently made a call, after committing to invest £2 million to establish a cohort of new Knowledge Exchange Opportunities with the retail sector.
The Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme is designed to promote the application of social science within non-academic communities. Which means that the target audience of the grant activity must be non-academic stakeholders within the private, public or civil society sectors. The flexibility built into the scheme is intended to encourage applicants to think creatively about knowledge exchange and the ESRC are welcoming applications for either a single activity or a combination of activities.
Potential activities could include:
Also, a targeted call has been made for:
The call for all applications closes on 30 April 2013.
For further information please visit the ESRC website
The Economic and Social Research Council invites applications for its celebrating impact prize.
This prize is intended to recognise and reward ESRC-funded researchers who have achieved, or are currently achieving outstanding economic or societal impacts through their research and collaborative working, partnerships, engagement and knowledge exchange activities. There are six categories for this prize: impact in business, impact in public policy, impact in society, international impact, early career impact, impact champion of the year.
A prize of £10,000 will be made to the winners of each category, with a further £10,000 for the department with the impact champion of the year.
The application deadline is 16.00 on 14 February 2013.
For further information please click here.
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.
BU’s Teresa Coffin and Eva Papadopoulou (Research and Knowledge Exchange Operations) attended a training day hosted by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) aimed at discussing the challenges and opportunities for the social sciences in the current climate. The focus of the event included presentations from the main Department Heads who outlined their internal workings, grant application framework and advice for successful applications. They also discussed their amended research agenda, funding opportunities, various partnerships and current strategic priorities. Notes from the day can be found here:
Six research councils are inviting applications to fill governing council vacancies expected to arise in 2013.
Suitably qualified academics and experienced individuals from industry, commerce, government, and the voluntary, creative and cultural sectors, can apply.
The vacancies are at the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
The vacancies include some positions with audit committee responsibilities for part-time membership.
Annual honoraria of £6,850 will be paid. The closing date for applications is 19 November.
The Nuffield Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) are launching a £15.5 million funding programme in October 2012 aimed at promoting a step-change in quantitative methods training for UK social science undergraduates.
This 5-year programme will fund the creation of a network of up to 15 Quantitative Methods Centres to develop new approaches aimed at embedding the acquisition and application of quantitative skills to substantive issues in disciplines across the UK social science undergraduate curricula.
Centres will be able to apply for funding of up to £350k per year to develop and deliver a wide range of fundable training activities, including bursaries for students attending holiday courses or in relevant work placements, recruitment of new staff and the development of new courses and pathways to careers requiring skills in quantitative methods.
Centres are expected to be within single Higher Education Institutions, with limited scope for any consortia arrangements. Single departments or groups of departments within an Institution may apply, but only one application per Higher Education Institution will be allowed.
We expect that competition for funds will be intense. Applying Institutions should therefore already have demonstrable expertise in and commitment to developing quantitative skills in the social sciences.
More information about the programme can be found on the Nuffield Foundation website www.nuffieldfoundation.org from October 15th. They will also be holding two launch events in London and Manchester to present this initiative:
Friday 19th October @ 11.00am British Academy, London
Thursday 8th November @ 11.15am Manchester University
If you are interested in applying, they hope that you will be able to attend one of these events. This is an open invitation, but all who wish to attend must register so that they can plan for numbers. Initially, no more than 2 attendees per HEI, but if they have room they would be happy to allow more.
If you would like to attend, please RSVP by e-mail using the attached form to QMEnquiries@nuffieldfoundation.org by Monday 8th October. They will send further information about the events to registered attendees.
The scheme provides the opportunity to apply for funding for knowledge exchange activities at any stage of the research lifecycle, and is aimed at maximising the impact of social science research outside academia.
The flexibility built into the scheme is intended to encourage applicants to think creatively about knowledge exchange, and applications are welcomed for either a single activity or a combination of activities; be it setting up a network to help inform the development of a research proposal, arranging an academic placement with a voluntary or business organisation, or developing tools such as podcasts and videos aimed at communicating the results of research to the general public, or developing existing research to make it more applicable to policy or practice.
Following comments from the community on the difficulty of securing cash contributions from user stakeholders, we have changed the scheme’s co-funding requirement so that partner contributions can now consist of any combination of cash or in-kind resources. The scheme has also been broadened to allow applications for new applied research, provided this is user-led or in collaboration with a user partner. Further details regarding these changes are outlined in the guidance documents below.
The call opened on 20 August 2012 and closes at 16.00 on 2 October 2012.
Call documents, including the scheme guidance are provided below:
Within this round of the Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme there is also the opportunity to apply for two prespecified placement fellowship projects. The first placement is with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency, and the second placement is with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The specification for each placement, including details of how to apply, can be found below:
ESRC aim to inform applicants of a decision on all applications within 26 weeks of the closing date for the call. Funding decisions will then be advertised on this website.
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance. Alternatively, contact ESRC at knowledgeexchange@esrc.ac.uk.
The first awards under the India-Europe research grants scheme for the social sciences have been made.
The Open Research Area (ORA) scheme is a multi-funded (including the ESRC) EU focused programme which supports collaborations between researchers in India and Europe. This year, the three-year research projects will each include an Indian partner alongside researchers from UK, French, German or the Netherlands. They will study areas such as ageing and wellbeing, the global accessibility of medicine and the cultural authority of science. You can read about the funded projects on the DFG (German funders) website.
The funding scheme is designed to provide top-up resources to established working groups, to enhance collaborative efforts as part of a cross-continent social sciences network. A new call for proposals will be launched in September and close in January 2013.
The ESRC’s Future Research Leaders call is currently open with a closing date of 4th October 2012.
Universities are expected to consider applications very carefully prior to submitting them to the ESRC through this call, and all applications need to be supported with a letter from the PVC (Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation).
With this in mind BU has established a process for submissions to this call. All proposals must be submitted to a special version of our internal peer review scheme (the RPRS) first and must be signed off by Matthew Bennett as PVC (Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation) prior to submission.
For applicants interested in the scheme, the key internal dates are as follows:
| 28th Aug | Proposals to be submitted to the RPRS and sent for review. |
| 10th Sept | Proposal feedback to be returned to applicants. |
| 10th Sept – 21st Sept | Applicants to finalise proposals based on reviewer feedback. |
| 21st Sept | Final proposals to be sent to Matthew Bennett (via RKE Ops). |
| Matthew Bennett to review and approve final proposals (and write the PVC letter of support). Once reviewed, CRE Operations will let applicants know when to submit via Je-S. | |
| 26th Sept | Final decision from Matthew Bennett re: proposals to submit |
| 26th – 1st Oct | Selected applicants finalise proposals |
| 1st Oct | Final proposals submitted via Je-S |
| 4th October | ESRC deadline |
If you are considering applying to the scheme but have not yet confirmed this with the RKE Ops team please could you do so as soon as possible.
Please take the time to read through the call documentation available on the ESRC website – it contains a lot of important information about assessment criteria and what the ESRC are looking for in a proposal.
If you have any questions about this call or the Resarch Proposal Review Service please contact Caroline O’Kane
“Data is the new raw material of the 21st century, it allows citizens to hold governments to account, drives improvements in public services by informing choice, and provides a feedstock for innovation and growth.” As open-source data is set to grow, this is a key time to better understand how it maps onto and possibly significantly strengthens, the ability of academics to understand society. The ESRC and Google are therefore pleased to announce the Google Data Analytics Social Science Research Call.
The call for Google Data Analytics Social Science Research aims to provide funding for projects that demonstrate the potential of how publicly accessible online data, analytical and presentational tools, such as those provided by Google, can be used to address social and economic research topics, showcasing how academics can use online data analytical tools in creative, intellectual and creative ways. As part of this process, the projects should:
They have allocated £200,000 to fund a maximum of four research projects lasting up to one year. The call will open on 20 August 2012 and close on 2 October 2012.
To register for this call launch workshop please send a brief description of your area of interest to:knowledgeexchange@esrc.ac.uk by 2 August 2012. Please note, this information may be circulated to other attendees unless you state otherwise.
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.
The ESRC student internship scheme provides current ESRC-funded PhD students with the opportunity to spend up to six months in a non-academic organisation within the public, civil society (voluntary) or private sector where they can work as part of a team involved with policy and practice development.
The internship scheme provides both student and host organisations with a clear set of benefits and contributes to the skills and professional development of PhD students.
Students can benefit from:
Hosts can benefit from:
If you are an ESRC-funded student wishing to undertake an internship award during 2012, you will need to complete and return an application form for each of the host organisation(s) you wish to apply to by the closing date of 10 August 2012.
Application forms and project details for participating hosts are available using the host organisations links below.
Internship holders receive a three month extension to their ESRC award (conditions apply), and will be able to claim for reasonable travel and accommodation costs (conditions apply).
Students and host organisations must complete and submit an End of Award Report within three months of completing the internship.
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.
Dementia initiativeThe Prime Minister has announced plans to tackle what he is calling a ‘national crisis’ posed by dementia, including a doubling of research funding into dementia to £66 million per annum by 2015. As part of the funding being made available, the ESRC and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) will be working together to support an initiative with up to £13 million funding available for social science research on dementia.
The initiative will fund large grants which will be national or international focal points for social science research in Dementia which make a significant contribution to scientific, economic and social impact. The call will address the following areas, see Research Agenda (PDF, 71Kb) for full details:
For further information please email: dementia@esrc.ac.uk
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.
Huge congratulations to Dr Richard Shipway, who has been awarded sponsorship by the ESRC to run an event during the ESRC’s national Festival of Social Science in November .
The event, Optimising Olympic tourism opportunities after the 2012 Games, will use insights from Richard’s research to explore how the potential of the London 2012 Games can be harnessed to enhance tourism in the years following the Olympics.
If you wish to learn more about the event, please contact Dr Richard Shipway on RShipway@bournemouth.ac.uk.
If you would like to learn more about public engagement activities across BU or explore how you can develop public engagement activities around your research, please contact Becca on REdwards@bournemouth.ac.uk
Grant Linked studentships are designed to add value to the proposed research outlined in the grant application, whilst providing a clear opportunity for a distinct and independent course of enquiry for the student. Through being embedded with a high quality research team, they should offer the student an opportunity to both develop their substantive research skills, alongside broader professional development.
Grant linked studentships may be requested on any research application (with the exception of the Future Leaders scheme) as long as:
Up to three studentships can be applied for on any single grant application. It must also be clear that the studentship is not a displacement for the normal research support required on the grant. The student must have a distinct, independent area of enquiry that will add value to the overall research objectives of the grant.
For further details on the application process for Grant Linked Studentships please read the information available within the Research Funding Guide.
More information on the details on the rules and regulations for Grant linked studentships can be found within the Postgraduate Funding Guidelines.
If you require further assistance please contact ptdenquiries@esrc.ac.uk
The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.
Professor Ruth Towse and Professor Martin Kretschmer have been awarded funding from the ESRC (RES-622-26-565) to organise an event as part of the Festival of Social Science 2012.
The symposium ‘What constitutes evidence for copyright policy?’ will be held on 8 November 2012 in the Executive Business Centre.
Professors Towse and Kretschmer write: “This interactive event offers the opportunity for discussion on evidence for copyright policy between social scientists, policy-makers and producers and users of copyright works. Copyright law is a topical and contentious area that affects a wide range of stakeholders with differing views on copyright policy. The need for evidence-based policy on copyright policy was emphasised in the Hargreaves Review and has led to several calls for evidence from stakeholders. The responses they provide to the Intellectual Policy Office are varied in nature and quality; the IPO has responded by issuing guidelines on what constitutes acceptable evidence (which itself is contested).
“Besides being a matter of pressing public concern, copyright also attracts the interest of a broad range of social science disciplines each with its own rules of evidence. The emphasis on economic growth as the objective of copyright policy has shifted the need for evidence in the direction of economics but economic evidence is not always easily available. Nor it is the case that only quantitative evidence is regarded as valid.”
The event will involve the following:
If you are interested to participate, please contact Dr Rebecca Edwards (Research Development Officer, Public Engagement): redwards@bournemouth.ac.uk
The ESRC has profiled key areas of ESRC funded research exploring many aspects of our lives through a series of videos and articles, which can be found here.
The research is grouped thematically around the iconic nursery rhyme ‘Monday’s Child’ and is well worth taking a few moments to look at (even if you don’t consider yourself a social scientist) as the themes have a considerable bearing on all of us.
I think the videos are also great examples of how to make short broadcasts about your research in a way that is engaging to many audiences. The short articles contained on the site are also not only interesting, but provide useful examples of how to communicate your research without ‘dumming down’ your findings.
Many congratulations to Dr Debbie Sadd, from the School of Tourism, who has been awarded funding to run an event during the ESRC Festival of Social Science which will be held during 3-10 November this year.
Her event London 2012: Was it worth it? will bring together up to 200 young people from local schools to debate the impact of the Olympic and Paralympic Games on the local area and the country as a whole. Speakers at the debate will include representatives from Dorset 2012, Sporting Legacy, Podium and BU. Not only will young people (and their teachers!) get to learn more about the research happening at Bournemouth University, it is hoped that the debate generated will help to inform future research.
Debbie’s event will also help young people engage with social science more generally by exploring the value of understanding evidence and critical thinking.
Along with our other successful events, this debate will help put BU on the Festival of Social Science map in what will be the tenth year of the festival!
BU staff can login below:
BU professor speaking at Aberdeen Centre for Women’s Health Research (ACWHR)
Reminder: Opportunity to get more involved in preparing Social Work and Social Policy REF 2029 submission – impact and engagement
Open access for books tool
New seed fund for public engagement with research: open for applications
Research Information Network
Horizon Europe News – December 2023