British Academy Launches Innovation Fellowships Scheme for Policy-Led Research
The British Academy has been funded by the UK government, Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to support a pilot of a new scheme, the Innovation Fellowships.
The Innovation Fellowships scheme will provide funding and support for established early-career and mid-career researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences to partner with organisations and business in the creative and cultural, public, private and policy sectors, to address challenges that require innovative approaches and solutions.
Through the Innovation Fellowships, researchers in the SHAPE community will be supported to create new and deeper links beyond academia, so enabling knowledge mobilisation and translation, as well as individual skills development. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Developing new approaches for supporting innovation across the economy, regions, and society
- Contributing to and leading on challenges targeted at increasing links with industry and business, broadly defined
- Improving direct connection of researchers with policymakers, leaders and innovators at local and regional levels.
These Fellowships will forge innovative place-based partnerships to create new intellectual, cultural, community and economic opportunities that will address challenges around economic recovery, societal or policy concerns and bring innovations (including digital and data innovation) into a breadth of sectors.
The Innovation Fellowships scheme has two routes:
- Route A: Researcher-led (a call for this closed to applications on 8 December 2021).
- Route B: Policy-led.
This call is inviting applications for funding for a policy-led Innovation Fellowship (Route B), working with their partner, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
The FCDO has specialised research requirements, operating in a context where timely access to high-quality evidence-based analysis can mean the difference between success and failure. Exerting influence, negotiating and leveraging others’ power at precisely the right moment is at a premium. This can make it difficult for researchers operating outside the FCDO to have a significant impact. These Fellowships will provide an opportunity to change that by enabling close interaction with FCDO policymakers directly in the heart of this government department’s work.
These Fellowships will take place in the context of the publication earlier this year of the UK Government’s “Integrated Review”, known as Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. This describes the Government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world over the next decade and the action the UK will take to 2025 to achieve this.
The Academy and the FCDO invite applications for Fellowships in any of the following five areas:
- The global role of the USA
- The regional politics of Southeast Asia
- Law, values and ethics in the international digital and telecommunications environment
- Levelling up
- Diplomatic Influence and its Evidence Base.
Applicants must be an early-career or mid-career researcher based at an institution in the UK (e.g. a Higher Education Institution [HEI] or Independent Research Organisation [IRO]), from disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Applicant must commit between 0.6 and 0.8 FTE time to the Fellowship.
Route B (Policy-led) awards will have a maximum award value of £120,000 on an 80% Full Economic Costing (FEC) basis.
Awards can be held for 12 months.
Awards must start no earlier than 1 March 2022 and no later than 31 March 2022
Applications must be submitted online via the British Academy Flexi-Grant® Grant Management System (GMS) by the deadline 26 January 2022 (5pm UK time).