Funding call: Innovation Fellowships Route B (Policy-led)
The British Academy has been funded by the UK’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to support a pilot of a new scheme, the Innovation Fellowships. The Innovation Fellowships scheme is a dual-route scheme designed to enable researchers in the humanities and social sciences to partner with organisations and businesses in the creative, cultural, public, private and policy sectors in order to address challenges that require innovative approaches and solutions. Through the Innovation Fellowships, our researchers in the SHAPE community will be supported to create new and deeper links beyond academia, enabling knowledge mobilisation and translation, as well as individual skills development.
Both routes require an established researcher to work with a UK-based partner organisation on a specified policy or societal challenge that contributes to the aims of the scheme for a period of up to one year.
Aims
The British Academy is inviting applications for funding for a policy-led Innovation Fellowship (Route B), working with our partner, the Foreign, Commonwealth and 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 FCDO’s response to the war in Ukraine, its impact on the post-Cold War international order and effects not just in Ukraine, but across the wider region. The Academy and the FCDO invite applications for Fellowships in any of the following three areas:
1. Russian Economy and Sanctions. A Fellowship in this area would focus on the profound economic consequences of the war for Russia, including but not limited to issues such as: economic developments inside Russia, including the impact of sanctions; the knock-on effects of sanctions overseas, including the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s search for non-Western markets; Russia’s use of economic levers abroad; illicit finance; arms sales; and potential war reparations.
2. Belarus. A Fellowship on Belarus would look at the full range of issues facing the country, including but not limited to: regime security, internal security and human rights; economic issues including the impact of sanctions on Belarus and the knock-on impact of Russia sanctions; relations with Russia, its neighbours and the wider world, including migration issues.
3. Russian Foreign Policy. While the world remains focused on the war in Ukraine, Russia continues to exert influence beyond the Euro-Atlantic space. Its efforts to bolster its position internationally, promoting itself as a great power with global reach in a multipolar world often put it in competition with the Western countries. A Fellowship could explore Russia’s role in Africa, Asia and/or the Middle East. It would look at the range of tools and levers Russia has at its disposal (including in the political, economic and information space) and their effects – for Russia and the relevant regions, as well as in multilateral fora and specifically for the UK.
Eligibility requirements
The British Academy is inviting applications from early career and mid career researchers who are working on the themes of policy and/or society who could contribute fresh perspectives to a specified challenge. Applicants might have expertise from a wide range of disciplinary, conceptual and methodological perspectives, including analytical, policy and practical perspectives. You 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.
Applicants must also meet the requirements set out above in the ‘Working at and with the FCDO’ section of the scheme guidance notes.
Applications are welcome from early career researchers and mid career researchers. Please note that applications from independent researchers cannot be accepted in this round of the scheme. Postgraduate students are not eligible to apply for grant support from the Academy and applicants are asked to confirm in the personal details section(s) that they are not currently working towards a PhD, nor awaiting the outcome of a viva voce examination, nor awaiting the acceptance of any corrections required by the examiners.
Applicants may not hold more than one British Academy award of a comparable nature at any one time.
Applicants for the Innovation Fellowships scheme should be intending to pursue challenges that can benefit from the contribution of humanities or social sciences expertise.
Value and duration
Route B (Policy-led) awards will have a maximum award value of £120,000 on an 80 per cent Full Economic Costing (FEC) basis. The applicant must commit between 0.6 and 0.8 FTE time to the Fellowship.
Application process
Expressions of interest must be submitted online using the British Academy’s Grant Management System (GMS), Flexi-Grant®.
Expressions of interest must be submitted by Wednesday 6 July 2022, 17:00 (BST).
Contact details
Email: Christina Moorhouse (c.moorhouse@thebritishacademy.ac.uk)