The Arts and Humanities Impact Fund is a competition intended for University of Essex academic staff from any School or Department to undertake projects that will realise Impact for potential submission to the REF2028 Main Panel D disciplines or Law (which is returned to Main Panel C). The Fund will consider applications for up to £10,000 per project for short projects to be completed by 31 July 2024.
The Fund privileges Impact over ‘early-stage’ engagement, co-production, and relationship building. It will only support the ‘early-stage’ activities if they are part of clear, plausible, and well-scheduled Impact plans. Any co-production plans must articulate their engagement processes and Impact objectives with clarity. The Fund does not support basic research (also known as primary, discovery, or curiosity driven research). The competition prioritises projects that can support Arts and Humanities Impact Case Study development ahead of REF2028. For advice on Impact and Impact Case Studies, please contact your faculty’s Research Impact Officer.
The scheme is open to all University of Essex academic staff, with minor exceptions asterisked below. For all applicants, the underpinning research must fall within the Arts and Humanities disciplinary remit. The remit is defined as disciplines offered by the University’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities as submitted to REF2021 and disciplines, marked below with asterisks, for potential submission to REF2028. The asterisked disciplines are for Faculty staff only.
*Exclusively for academic staff who may be returned to REF2028 through Edge Hotel School or another Faculty of Arts and Humanities school / department.
Please complete the application form and return to impact-programmes@essex.ac.uk. The deadline for applications is 5pm on 2 October 2024. Applications will be reviewed by a panel and outcomes are expected to be communicated w/c 16 October. Please discuss your application with your Research Impact Officer prior to submission. Refer to the guidance notes for full details.
The Impact Accelerator Fund aims to enhance the non-academic impact of arts and humanities research. The Fund supports projects that develop productive, sustainable relationships with collaborators and research users in the private, third, or public sector to enable research impact. For this call, up to £15K (including VAT) is available for short projects which need to be completed by 31 July 2023.
The Arts and Humanities Impact Accelerator Fund is open to Principal Investigators employed within any University department with project proposals within the AHRC remit (p. 91). Applicants do not need to have previously held AHRC funding to be eligible. Interdisciplinary projects with a major arts and humanities component are also welcome.
This fund is for IMPACT activities only. Primary research cannot be supported.
Awards can cover research staff costs and associated project costs. For this call, please only include staff costs where the RA has been identified and available to commence work on the project. The funds requested should be appropriate for the grant duration and the resources required to realise the project’s objectives. Buyout of teaching and costs associated with publishing a journal article, are not eligible. If your application will include funding for staff, please contact bwilk@essex.ac.uk to ensure staff costs are correctly costed before submitting your application a minimum of 3 working days in advance of the deadline. Please do not contact REO Pre-Award for costings.
Please complete the application form and return to policy-engagement@essex.ac.uk. The deadline for applications is 6 March. Applications will be reviewed by a panel and outcomes are expected to be communicated w/c 13 March. Please discuss your application with your Research Impact Officer prior to submission. Refer to the guidance notes for full details.
The University of Essex has been awarded funding from Research England’s Policy Support Fund (PSF) to support research activity aimed at evidence-based policy making. The funding is for universities to undertake research with local, regional, national and international structures (including parliament, central government, devolved administrations, local government, health and education bodies, the justice system and other regulatory organisations) with a particular focus on local and regional challenges. Applications of up to £10,000 per project will be considered. Proposals could include:
New research activity working in partnership with policymakers, particularly to better understand local, regional or national challenges
Extending existing policy-related research activity
Facilitating the use of existing research and the exchange of knowledge between universities and policymakers
Activity aimed at improving the dialogue between universities and policymakers
Activity and training to better equip academics, including postgraduate researchers and early career researchers, to communicate effectively with policymakers
Partnerships and collaborations aimed at supporting evidence-based policymaking
The exchange of people e.g., staff secondments, contributing towards professional doctorates in policy, joint PhDs, etc
All funds must be spent by 31 March 2023.
The University of Essex has been awarded funding from Research England to support participatory research. Participatory research is broadly defined as public participation in research, with public participants contributing at any stage of the research lifecycle (e.g., co-production, co-creation, citizen science). Applications of up to £15,000 per project will be considered. Participatory Research funding can be used to cover the costs of co-produced research and to run capacity-building activities such as:
Pilot projects using innovative models and methodologies for participatory research
The development of materials to support researchers interested in developing their skills in participatory research, and public engagement activities that are related to participatory and co-produced research
Case studies and evidence of the impact of co-produced research, and evaluations of the effectiveness of co-production from different institutions/disciplines
All funds must be spent by 31 July 2023.
The Centre for Public and Policy Engagement (CPPE) Engagement Fund supports academic and research staff to explore opportunities to engage public and policy audiences with their research. Small grants of up to £2000 will be available to support travel, engagement activities and events, which will target specific audiences from the public, policy and third sectors. The activity should:
Show clear societal benefit
Engage a clearly defined non-academic public or policy audience
Demonstrate how two-way engagement provided mutual benefit
Demonstrate a clear link to Essex research
For this call priority will be given to projects that:
Contain activities that reach disengaged, hard to reach or under-served audiences
Contain activities which explore issues relevant to coastal communities
All funds must be spent by 31 July 2023.
Eligible costs for all three schemes include Research Assistant salaries, activities related to research and data collection, engagement with stakeholders, training and development events, workshops, travel and conference attendance. Buyout of teaching and costs associated with publishing a journal article, are not eligible.
Please complete the application form, stating which fund you are applying for and return to policy-engagement@essex.ac.uk. See guidance notes for information on funding criteria. Any queries and requests for indicative costs can also be directed to this email address. The deadline for applications is 14 November 2022. Applications will be reviewed by a panel and outcomes are expected to be communicated w/c 21 November.
Successful applicants will be allocated a faculty code to spend against. PSF codes will close on 31 March 2023. CPPE and PRF codes will close on 31 July 2023. No spending is permitted after those dates (please note that there is no facility to rollover unspent funds into the next financial year). All recipients will be required to complete a short report at the end of the funding. Please note, if your project involves human participants, it may need ethical approval before a cost code can be issued. See guidance on obtaining ethical approval for research involving human participants.
The University of Essex Rapid Response Fund was a rolling competition open to the University’s academic staff. It has disbursed all funds. It supports proposals for ‘early stage’ impact work to a value of £2,000. The projects will be funded between 1 August 2023 and 31 July 2024.
To apply, academic colleagues were asked to download the application form and send a completed version to Impact-Programmes@essex.ac.uk.
The University of Essex Rapid Response Fund (Arts and Humanities) was a rolling competition open to academic staff employed in the University’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. It has disbursed all funds. It supports proposals for ‘early stage’ impact work to a value of £2,000. The projects will be funded between 1 August 2023 and 31 July 2024.
To apply, academic colleagues were asked to download the application form and send a completed version to Impact-Programmes@essex.ac.uk.
The University of Essex International Impact Fund was a competition open to the University’s academic staff between 3 and 31 July 2023. It received proposals for up to £10,000 to support projects that generate research impact around the globe. The work can happen in the United Kingdom, but most of the impact benefits must be realised abroad. The projects will be funded between 1 August 2023 and 31 July 2024
Please download the guidance for more information.
To apply, academic colleagues were asked to download the application form and send a completed version to Impact-Programmes@essex.ac.uk by 5pm on 31 July 2023.
Successful applicants will be allocated cost codes to spend against. For time limited funds it may be the case that no spending is permitted after a specific date so please consult the guidance for the call. Recipients may be required to complete reporting during or at the end of the funding. Please note, if your project involves human participants, it may need ethical approval before a cost codes can be issued. See guidance on obtaining ethical approval for research involving human participants.