We are delighted to announce that the second round of the University of Bath's ESRC Accelerating Impact Awards is now open.

Applications are welcome from projects that support, develop and foster strategic partnerships for knowledge exchange and impact in the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC) remit.

Projects must demonstrate clear potential for impact that is built on research which relates to a past ESRC grant, or research in the ESRC remit, and have a clear plan for how that impact will be achieved and evidenced.

Hannah Tebbutt, Impact and Knowledge Exchange Programme Manager, says:

We are delighted to be able to open the second round of the ESRC IAA Impact Development Fund. This year we have increased the total funding available to £175,000 and are inviting applications of up to £20,000 for social sciences impact projects. We are also actively encouraging innovative interdisciplinary projects, so please do get in touch with the team and share your ideas!

Professor Lizzi Milligan, Department of Education, received Open Call funding from the ESRC IAA in the last round. Speaking of the impact of the award, she says:

Our IAA award has enabled partners in Nepal to design and pilot teacher training based on our JustEd project findings. The IAA award was vital in helping us to test and prove the concept of this training. We're hopeful this will lead to our training being picked up by the Ministry of Education to be rolled out across the country.

Funding

This is a competitive award with two tiers of available funding:

  • Tier 1: Projects up to £10,000
  • Tier 2: Projects between £10,001 -£20,000

A total of £175,000 is available for the call.

Areas

We would particularly encourage applications from, although not limited to, the following areas in the current call:

  • Projects that take an interdisciplinary approach to greater societal and economic impacts from all subject disciplines, with at least 51% of project activity based within the ESRC subject remit and led by social sciences.
  • Under-represented groups, including female academics, ethnic minorities and early career researchers.
  • Collaborative projects involving the University of Bath and at least one other GW4 university.

Types of activity

Activities could include but are not restricted to: knowledge exchange projects with non-academic stakeholders, partnership development, prototyping, sector specific secondments, informing policy or engaging policymakers, market research and realisation of impact.