Funding call: Global Convening Programmes

The British Academy is inviting proposals for major new three-year programmes of internationally convened researchers. Awards will be for around £500,000 per annum each.

This call is a new style of programme for the Academy’s international engagement. The programmes will be problem- or challenge-focused and highly interdisciplinary.

The programmes will provide significant opportunities for researchers in the UK and internationally across the humanities and social sciences to network; open new fields of inquiry; harness research to address these challenges aiming to catalyse change in industry, practice, policy and society; and support collaborative exploration across disciplines and borders.

The awards made will be required to work in tandem with staff at the British Academy as partners on the programme. This will include both in terms of the development and organisation of the programme and also the knowledge translation aspects with industry, practice, policy and society.

Aims

The Academy is aiming to support international programmes that convene researchers internationally together over three years to develop sustained engagement across disciplines and borders. The Academy envisages the awards made through this call will excel in achieving the following expectations:

• An ambitious, beyond the state-of-the-art programme that breaks new ground, that will achieve a significant change related to the policy-related problem/challenge focused on, at a global level.
• An internationally convened body of researchers with engagement across multiple, and potentially all, regions of the world. The programme will develop a diverse and equitable international partnership that is transparent and based on mutual respect.
• A highly interdisciplinary body of researchers that includes both the humanities and the social sciences at its core and may include other disciplines beyond.
• A novel exchange of ideas and co-creation of knowledge with wider stakeholders through identifying areas with the Academy to catalyse change in – and translate knowledge with – industry, practice, policy and society.

Applications must be related to the themes below of Just Transitions, What is a good city? and Global (Dis)Order. These are to provide a framing for the call. The Academy wishes to encourage novel thinking rather than offering a pre-designed idea of the challenge. The onus is on the applicants to convince the Academy that their applications bring genuine added value to addressing the call.

• Just Transitions: In recent decades, just transitions are frequently understood in the context of climate change. However, today and in the past a just transition can have wider understandings, imaginations and experiences, and either of these can lead to contestation. Applications may focus on planetary health or just transition in a different framing. Whichever focus is pursued the Academy wishes to see engagement in exploring the needs, impacts and implications of just transitions in diverse societies and cultures within diverse histories and traditions, that include diverse approaches to justice, and consider how capacities and capabilities for adaptation as well as mitigation have been implemented successfully or not.
• What is a good city?: The ‘good city’ is a value-laden term including the criteria that may be used to judge how such values may be embedded in urban policymaking and how different values may cause friction. The ‘good city’ can also be imagined and represented. This may include the mediation of difficult histories and legacies and how the image of the city can inform the experience of the city dweller. The ‘good city’ evokes the good life, yet urban citizens often live with ill health, poor living conditions, fear, and helplessness. The image and the experience of the city can therefore conflict, and how cities are organised to manage urban conflict is important to understanding the governance, social inclusion and political processes that underpin the ‘good city’.
• Global (Dis)Order: There is no single solution to the challenges of global (dis)order. Plural and complex understandings are required that bring to the fore the cultural and historical elements of such understandings. This complexity includes the changing nature of the times at any moment in history, and the values and self-understandings that have often motivated the search for status, for recognition and a different kind of international order emanating in different regions and parts of the world. The study of global (dis)order must sit alongside analysis of justice and power that incorporates challenges to established patterns of authority.

In relation to these themes, the Academy wishes to emphasise the importance of developing an international and interdisciplinary collaboration, incorporating a wide range of regionally and historically constructed understandings and narratives. The Academy expects awards to engage deeply with the values, languages, traditions, cultures, literatures, histories and self-understandings across various regions of the world and their historical development. This includes an expectation that the applications will have a focus on lived experience and marginalised voices.

Eligibility requirements

The application process will be run as a two-stage process with initial expressions of interest followed by a final proposal supported by an in-person workshop at the British Academy.

Each expression of interest must include a core team of six to eight researchers based in the UK and internationally. This core team must include two programme leads. One of these must be based in the UK. In the wider team, there must be at least four participants not based in the UK.

This core team must include researchers from multiple disciplines. This must include researchers in both the humanities and social sciences.

Value and duration

Programmes will be three years in duration. All programmes will begin by the end of 2022.

The funding for the core team is intended to enable the researchers involved to have the time and space to work on the goals of the programme. This can be used flexibly. For example, for teaching load adjustments, postdoctoral support, research trips, fieldwork and other activities that support the research goals of the programme.

The two programme leads from different disciplines will receive research support of £15,000 per annum each. The up to 20 programme members from different disciplines will receive research support of £10,000 per annum each. A contribution of £10,000 will be provided to the programme lead(s) host institution.

In addition, the Academy will hold a budget for three annual international meetings to bring the programmes together in person. Once awarded the programme through the UK host institution will also be able to have additional funding available to support early-career researchers linked to the programme. This would normally enable the support of two early-career researchers.

The Academy will also provide further competitive funding biannually for knowledge translation grants during the course of the award to enable members of the programme to work with a range of counterparts beyond the programmes on matters related to industry, policy, practice and society.

Application process

Expressions of interest must be submitted online using the British Academy’s Grant Management System, Flexi-Grant®.

Expressions of interest must be submitted by Wednesday 6 July 2022, 17:00 (BST).

The timetable for the application process is as follows:

• Expressions of interest deadline: 6 July 2022 (17:00 BST)
• Invitations to send stage communicated: August 2022
• In-person workshops at the Academy: September – October 2022
• Final proposal deadline: 9 November 2022 (17:00 BST)
• Final outcome communicated: by end of 2022

Contact details

Email: g.fitzgibbon@thebritishacademy.ac.uk

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