Tagged / funding opportunities

Managing rejection – part two

In yesterday’s post, we looked at the initial moment your application is rejected, and how to digest what’s happened. Today’s post will look at what to do once you’ve reflected on the feedback.

For your own sanity, the first thing to consider is whether it is worth pursuing further, or if time has moved on and it’s time for something new. Whatever, you decide, you know that time and planning is a big factor. Like a research project, you also need to map out your application preparation as a project, to ensure you have sufficient time to craft it into a fundable bid. If you need partners, this needs even more time to find the right ones, develop the relationship, and ensure it’s trusted and beneficial to the research.

Resubmissions

To be blunt, most funders will not accept a resubmission. Funder success rates are low enough without old applications being repeatedly submitted. You also shouldn’t expect a different result from doing the same thing. Funders will expect a substantial change to an application if you’re going to submit the same research as a new bid. If the only changes you make are in response to the reviewer comments then you’re 99% more likely to be rejected again, and possibly before it’s even gone to reviewers. If a funder has a ‘no resubmission’ policy, they will chuck out anything that looks like one (they know the tricks too, and so you can’t fool them by swapping personnel or changing the title).

If a funder does allow resubmissions or has invited one, you’ll need to declare this upfront. If you thoroughly revise the application, take the advice of your peers, and resubmit, you could be successful.

Submit to different funders

You may be tempted to submit to another funder. However, beware! The funder may have a whole different approach, criteria, priorities, and schemes. Remember that you tailored your application originally for a specific funding call or a funders priorities. You will still need to substantially revise your application. If you start moving sections to fit into new ones, you may undermine your message, and your research becomes unclear. We’re back to using the crowbar again.

New idea

If you decide that you want to make a fresh start, do think about the tips given above and in yesterday’s post, and employ these to your next bid.

Alternative funding opportunities can be found on Research Professional. All BU academics have an account.

In RDS, we can help you review your feedback and determine what steps you should take next. We’re building a bank of funder feedback and ensuring that our training and development for research reflects the most common weaknesses identified. More information will be provided in Friday’s post, written by Research Facilitator, Alex Pekalski.

OPEN: Internal Expressions of interest for the Leverhulme Research Leadership Award

Funding opportunities

Bournemouth University invites expressions of interest from early and mid-career researchers at Bournemouth University, looking to build a research team to tackle a distinctive research problem.

The purpose of this scheme is to support talented scholars who have successfully launched a university career and are now looking to build a research team of sufficient scale to tackle a distinctive research problem. This opportunity will allow for the development and demonstration of research leadership of a modest team, whose research has potential to significantly change the established landscape in a particular field of inquiry.

Institutions are permitted to submit only one application. Applicants should have held a university post for at least two years, but not have developed their research such that the trajectory of their contribution has not been firmly established.

More information about the scheme is available from the Leverhulme Trust. Candidates are advised to check the eligibility criteria very carefully.

Candidates who are interested in making an application to the Leverhulme Research Leadership Award are asked to first submit the expression of interest application by 12pm 1st March 2022 to apekalski@bournemouth.ac.uk . The application form and assessment criteria can be found here: I:\RDS\Public\1. Leverhulme Research Leadership Awards Competition 2022.

Timeline:

08-02-2022 RDS advertise Expression of Interest (EoI)competition for call
12pm on 01-03-2022 EoI deadline (EoIs to be sent to RDS)
By 02-03-2022 Papers (applications) sent to DDRPPs
By 18-03-2022 DDRPPs panel meeting decision and feedback disseminated to applicants
18-03-2022 RDS to contact Leverhulme to provide the Trust with the applicant’s name, departmental affiliation, and email address. Access will then be granted to the Leverhulme Trust Grants Management System
March – June Applicants develop proposals with the support of RDS
w/c 30-05-2022 e-Submission checks performed by RDS
10-06-2022 Leverhulme Research Leadership Award Deadline

If you have further questions or queries, please contact Alexandra Pekalski (apekalski@bournemouth.ac.uk) to discuss your suitability for this opportunity.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding two monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the second Tuesday of every other month. You can register here for your preferred date:

8th March 2022

10th May 2022

12th July 2022

13th September 2022

8th November 2022

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you. Previous recordings can be found here if you can’t attend a session.

Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.

Reminder: The Leverhulme are visiting the funding development briefing Wednesday at 12 noon

Funding opportunities

Reminder: The Funding Development Briefing will be on Wednesday at 12 noon. The Leverhulme are visiting the session.

They will cover:

  • Overview of all their schemes, process, explain acronyms, highlight resources available etc.
  • Q & A

For those unable to attend the session, slides will be shared on Brightspace here. But the session will not be recorded.

Invites for these sessions have been disseminated via your Heads of Department. If you do not have these in your diary and wish to attend please contact Alexandra  Pekalski apekalski@bournemouth.ac.uk

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding two monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the second Tuesday of every other month. You can register here for your preferred date:

11th January 2022

8th March 2022

10th May 2022

12th July 2022

13th September 2022

8th November 2022

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you. Previous recordings can be found here if you can’t attend a session.

Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Funding opportunities

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to Research Professional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using Research Professional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of Research Professional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on Research Professional. They are holding two monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with Research Professional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the second Tuesday of every other month. You can register here for your preferred date:

11th January 2022

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you. Previous recordings can be found here if you can’t attend a session.

Have you noticed the pink box on the BU Research Blog homepage?

By clicking on this box, on the left of the Research Blog home page just under the text ‘Funding Opportunities‘, you access a Research Professional real-time search of the calls announced by the Major UK Funders. Use this feature to stay up to date with funding calls. Please note that you will have to be on campus or connecting to your desktop via our VPN to fully access this service.

Filling the gap: an ACORN funded project

Awarded & submitted bids, Post-award

Back in May 2021, Kimberley Davies (inset ) and Sarah Elliott submitted a bid to BU’s ACORN internal fund, which is focussed on supporting the career development for Early Career Researchers.

The bid was entitled

“Filling the Gap: Investigating past and present socio-ecological resilience to aid future sustainability in the Poole Harbour Catchment”.

Their ACORN project proposal was designed as a steppingstone towards a future UKRI grant application. Kim and Sarah’s project, which would bring together decades of archaeological and ecological research in the Poole Harbour Catchment area, to develop scenarios of future resilience in coastal regions in light of potential large-scale environmental change, is aimed at the AHRC ECR grant.

Broadly the project aimed to characterise key events from the last ~10,000 years in the Poole Harbour area, e.g. sea level rise or agricultural intensification, and evaluate their socio-ecological impacts using historical profiling and theoretical models. The pilot study would also investigate the applicability of using palaeoecological ‘proxies’ and geoarchaeological markers in the sediment horizons to understand the impact of large scale events. This is critical in order to develop a plausible framework for future research, including defining appropriate sampling locations and relevant environmental proxies to signify key changes.

Kim and Sarah had written an excellent application and had complied with all the requirements of the application process.

Sarah commented ‘The application process for the ACORN grant, whilst resembling a small UKRI grant, was straightforward to assemble and submit. The ACORN team provided support with to help those who are unsure about the grant application process. The grant is really beneficial for anyone who wants to test ideas or generate preliminary data as often proof of concept is critical to the success of larger grants but can be difficult to obtain.’

Kim and Sarah were awarded funding and the project was successfully delivered within the time frame for the grant. Like most projects, it wasn’t plain sailing, but all the key aims were achieved and they are now actively working towards the submission of the full UKRI grant.

Kim stated that ‘The provision of a small sum of money has allowed us to generate pilot data that we are using as part of our larger bid. As two ECRs the ACORN grant allowed us to work closely together to develop this project idea as project leads, which is often difficult to do as part of other grants. We are now working together on the larger UKRI bid which makes this part less daunting and more achievable within a specific timeframe.’

These photos were taken during the fieldwork in Poole Harbour:

BU colleague Harry Manley joined Sarah and Kim on fieldwork to learn more about the process of palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Sediments were retrieved from as deep as 5m below the surface. Multiple locations are logged in order to establish the best location to take a sediment core from.

During the analysis of the samples back in the lab :

The lab analyses included looking at the geochemistry, organic content, pollen and silica phytolith microscopic plant remains, the magnetic susceptibility, particle size and insects. These analyses helped to understand what has been preserved and what can be looked at in detail in future projects.

The ACORN grant allowed the sediments to be dated and helped to establish that the deepest deposits sampled so far are approximately 5000 years old!

For more information about ACORN funding, see the ACORN intranet page or contact ACORN@bournemouth.ac.uk.

(Photo credits: Kim Davies and Sarah Elliott, Bournemouth University)

 

Michelle Heward; reflections from an ACORN Awardee

Awarded & submitted bids, Post-award, Training

How BU ECR ACORN funding has helped my research career

I was awarded BU ECR Acorn funding in 2018 for a study titled ‘Minimising disorientation in care homes: Experiences of care home staff’. The funding enabled me to recruit and manage a student Research Assistant to undertake telephone interviews with care home managers, exploring how they address spatial disorientation and navigation of residents with dementia in such environments.

With guidance and support from my line manager Prof Jan Wiener and colleagues from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, I was able to gain experience of leading the study as Principal Investigator and contributing to the evidence base of current practice by publishing the findings in a journal article.

This experience has proven to be an essential element in building my research profile. It demonstrates my capability to build a multi-disciplinary team and lead a study through the research cycle, from idea to dissemination stage. As such, it has been a catalyst for me to obtain external research funding from the Alzheimer’s Research UK South Coast Network to continue developing my expertise and networks in this area. It has also given me the confidence to take forwards further research interests and ideas with my other line manager Prof Jane Murphy and various internal and external colleagues. I have since applied to funders such as NIHR, EPSRC, and Alzheimer’s Society – with some success and some still awaiting an outcome!

Personally, I feel that the support for ECRs at BU has improved recently with the development of initiatives such as the ECR network, ECR Acorn funding, and training and development courses specifically aiming at ECRS as part of the RKE Development Framework. I have benefited from career planning and development advice and resources from my line managers, those who run the ECR network, the BU MyCareerHub (particularly the networking and Linked in guidance) and having access to health and wellbeing resources such as a coach to discuss career trajectory.

I would encourage all ECRs at BU to take the time to look at what is available and make use of what is appropriate to them. If applying for ECR Acorn funding, start with a small, manageable project and involve more experienced colleagues to ensure you feel supported and able to complete the study.

Apply now: the Research Impact Fund is open for 2021/22!

Funding opportunities

We are pleased to announce that the Research Impact Fund is now open for applications.

This call is for researchers at all stages of their careers to support the planning and development of impact from new or ongoing research. For 2021/22, the fund has been split into two strands:

Strand 1: To support the development of new research partnerships and networks, to lay the groundwork for future research projects.

Strand 2: To provide support for emerging impact from existing underpinning research.

Who can apply?

Strand 1 is aimed at early career researchers (those who are within 7 years of completing their doctorate, or equivalent experience, and are not associate professors / professors) and staff who are new to research (academic staff who have not published an academic output, or received internal or external funding for research). The funding aims to support colleagues to engage with key stakeholders at the very beginning of the research process, to establish partnerships and networks to support the co-creation of research questions. The panel would like to fund multiple projects and therefore particularly welcome applications for projects up to £2,000.

Strand 2 is aimed at academic staff with existing research which has the potential for impact, or is starting to result in impact. The funding aims to support the development of research impact across BU and begin to identify potential case studies for post-REF2021 exercises. The panel would like to fund multiple projects and therefore particularly welcome applications for projects up to £4,000.

What we’re looking for

Applicants need to demonstrate a clear understanding of how their research – whether proposed or existing – can lead to impact. The UKRI defines research impact as “an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia”.

For strand 1, the emphasis is on establishing and developing relationships with partners, organisations and research users that will lead to impact in the future. This may involve:

  • Collaborating with partners to apply for external funding
  • The co-creation of research questions
  • Building relationships with policymakers and policy brokers
  • Creating a stakeholder advisory group to suggest additional activities for achieving impact, as well as reviewing and providing feedback on proposed activities.

With strand 2, the focus is on maximising the potential of existing research by identifying activities that will translate outputs into impact/s.

This may include, but is not limited to:

  • Developing printed and digital resources
  • Collating further data sets
  • Creating briefings and information leaflets for policymakers
  • Updating and developing websites to disseminate findings and encourage/monitor use
  • Identifying additional potential beneficiaries and stakeholders
  • Undertaking media activity to raise awareness, change opinions or attitudes, mobilise action or influence decisions by people with power.
  • Creating new methods of engagement with the research findings, e.g., video, podcasts, apps etc.
  • Developing associated educational resources based on insights.

Application process

To apply, please first read the policy and guidance notes. Then submit the relevant online form. PDF versions are supplied so that you may preview the form, but must not be submitted:

Strand 1 application form

Strand 1 application form pdf version

Strand 2 application form

Strand 2 application form PDF version

Applications must be submitted by Friday 10th December.

If you have any questions about your application, please email Amanda Edwards.

Applicants are strongly advised to attend the surgery session on applying for internal funding for impact and public engagement on Thursday 18 November and / or book a 1-2-1 session with an Impact Advisor. Find out more about the surgery and book a place here.

BU’s Research Principles

Putting the Research Impact Fund into strategic context, under BU2025, the following funding panels operate to prioritise applications for funding and make recommendations to the Research Performance and Management Committee (RPMC).

There are eight funding panels:

  1. HEIF Funding Panel
  2. GCRF Funding Panel
  3. Research Impact Funding Panel
  4. Doctoral Studentship Funding Panel
  5. ACORN Funding Panel
  6. Research Fellowships Funding Panel
  7. Charity Support Funding Panel
  8. SIA Funding panel

Please see further announcements regarding each initiative.

These panels align with the BU2025 focus on research, including BU’s Research Principles.  Specifically, but not exclusively, regarding the Research Impact Funding Panel, please refer to:

  • Principle 5 – which sets of the context for such funding panels,
  • Principle 6 and Outcome 9 – which recognises the need for interdisciplinarity and the importance of social science and humanities (SSH).