We are running this funding opportunity on the new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service so please ensure that your organisation is registered. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system.
To be recognised as the holder of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded fellowship, you are required to submit your successful CENTRE-UB application through the Funding Service. Your application will not be re-assessed as part of this process, but ESRC will check proposals to ensure they meet ESRC’s funding rules as outlined in the ESRC research funding guide.
The fellow is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service. We expect project partners to have contributed to the successful application submitted to CENTRE-UB.
To apply
Select ‘Start application’ near the beginning of this Funding finder page.
- Confirm you are the fellow.
- Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email support@funding-service.ukri.org
Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service.
- Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and guidance are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
- Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
- Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
- Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.
Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. You should:
- use images sparingly and only to convey important information that cannot easily be put into words
- insert each new image onto a new line
- provide a descriptive legend for each image immediately underneath it (this counts towards your word limit)
- ensure files are smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format
Watch our research office webinars about the new Funding Service.
For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:
Deadline
ESRC must receive your application by 4:00pm UK time on 3 September 2024.
You will not be able to apply after this time.
Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines.
Following the submission of your application to the funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and applications will not be returned for amendment. If your application does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected.
Personal data
Processing personal data
ESRC, as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.
We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our privacy notice.
Publication of outcomes
ESRC, as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at What ESRC has funded.
If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the UKRI Gateway to Research.
Summary
Word limit: 550
In plain English, please provide a summary of the aims of the fellowship.
We may make this summary publicly available on external-facing websites, therefore do not include any confidential or sensitive information. Make it suitable for a variety of readers, for example:
- opinion-formers
- policymakers
- the public
- the wider research community
Guidance for writing a summary
Please summarise the aims of the fellowship. It should be written in a style that is accessible to a variety of readers, including the general public.
Please note that this section will be made available on the Gateway to Research database, therefore you should not include any confidential or sensitive information.
Core team
List the key members of your team and assign them roles from the following:
Only list one individual as fellow. No other individuals should be entered in this section. Find out more about UKRI’s core team roles in funding applications.
Application questions
Eligibility
Word limit: 250
You are only eligible to apply for this funding opportunity if you have applied to the CENTRE-UB Early Career Researcher Fellowships Programme 2024, have been nominated as a successful candidate, and have received an invite link to apply. If you haven’t received a link but think you are eligible, please contact the CENTRE-UB.
Your application will not be re-assessed as part of this process.
CENTRE-UB is responsible for checking the eligibility of applicants against the scheme’s requirements as published in their funding opportunity.
Please provide the following information listed under the guidance section below.
Your PhD award date or, if not yet completed, please state date of viva voce and expected award date. Please note that failure to provide PhD award date will result in the application being rejected.
Resources and cost justification
Word limit: 1,000
What will you need to deliver your proposed work and how much will it cost?
What the assessors are looking for in your response
Please provide a breakdown and justification for the costs requested in the application as provided in your CENTRE-UB application. No justification is needed for estates and indirect costs.
In your statement, please include the details from the Justification of Resources form which you submitted to CENTRE-UB as part of your application.
Your statement should explain why the indicated resources are needed, taking account of the nature and complexity of the activities proposed. Note that it is not sufficient merely to list what is required. Your statement should also provide a breakdown of resources into the summary fund headings Directly Incurred, Directly Allocated and (where appropriate) Exceptions, as outlined in the application form. In addition, spend should be justified related to the following headings:
- staff (salary costs of fellow)
- travel and subsistence (to clearly show the basis on which these costs have been calculated, for example daily rates for subsistence, or X number of journeys based on pounds per year per trip)
- other costs (to include mentoring costs, conference attendance, training, fieldwork, impact related costs and networking)
In line with the ESRC research funding guide, any request for items that would ordinarily be found in a department, for example non-specialist laptops, must include justification both for why they are required for the fellowship and why they cannot be provided by the host institution. Requests for specialist or high-performance computers must include a clear justification as to why they are necessary for the project.
Please note that apart from the fellow’s salary, indirect and estate costs, all other costs must not exceed £10,000 in total except where a research organisation costs infrastructure technicians separately to estate costs. In those instances, the cost of infrastructure technicians will not be counted within the £10,000 limit on other costs.
In some cases, such as investigator time, use of internal facilities and shared staff costs (all likely to be Directly Allocated costs), the basis of the costing need not be justified, but the need for the resources does need justification.
Estates, indirect and infrastructure technician costs do not need to be justified within the Justification of Resources.
Project partners
Add details about any project partners’ contributions. If there are no project partners, you can indicate this on the Funding Service.
A project partner is a collaborating organisation who will have an integral role in the proposed research. This may include direct (cash) or indirect (in-kind) contributions such as expertise, staff time or use of facilities.
Please provide the following information listed under the guidance section below and as provided in your CENTRE-UB application:
- the organisation name and address (searchable via drop-down list or enter the organisation’s details manually, as applicable)
- the project partner contact name and email address
- the type of contribution (direct or in-direct) and its monetary value
If a detail is entered incorrectly and you have saved the entry, remove the specific project partner record and re-add it with the correct information.
For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made.
Ethics and responsible research and innovation (RRI)
Word limit: 500
What are the ethical or RRI implications and issues relating to the proposed work? If you do not think that the proposed work raises any ethical or RRI issues, explain why.
What the assessors are looking for in your response
Your application will not be reassessed but please include details of your consideration of ethical issues as provided in your CENTRE-UB application form, that is consideration of ethical issues and how these will be mitigated. These can include ethical issues related to the participants, as well as the researcher.
Responsible research and innovation is a process that takes the wider impacts of research and innovation into account. Demonstrate that you have identified and evaluated:
- the relevant ethical considerations
- the relevant RRI or responsible research and innovation considerations, such as whether your proposed work may have unintended consequences, questions, ethical dilemmas, or social transformations
- how you will manage these considerations
All proposals have to comply with the ESRC Framework for Research Ethics which includes guidance for applicants and links to related web resources.
All necessary ethical approvals must be in place before the project commences, but do not need to have been secured at the time of application.
If you are generating data as part of your project, you should complete the Data management question and should cover ethical considerations relating to data in your response.
If you are not generating data and have not completed the Data management question you should address any legal or ethical considerations relating to your use of data here.
If you believe that an ethics review is not necessary, please explain your view.
Data management and sharing
Word limit: 500
How will you manage and share data collected or acquired through the proposed work?
What the assessors will be looking for in your application
Your application will not be reassessed but all applicants planning to generate any new dataset as part of their grant must include a data management plan. If applicable, please include details of your data management, as submitted to CENTRE-UB.
Your data management plan should clearly detail how you will comply with UKRI’s published data sharing policy, which includes detailed guidance notes.
Demonstrate that you have designed your proposed work so that you can appropriately manage and share data in accordance with ESRC’s research data policy and ESRC framework for research ethics (if applicable).
Within the ‘Data management’ section we also expect you to:
- plan for the research through the life cycle of the award until data is accepted for archiving by the UK Data Service (UKDS) or a responsible data repository
- demonstrate compliance with ESRC’s research data policy and ESRC framework for research ethics. This should include confirmation that existing datasets have been reviewed and why currently available datasets are inadequate for the proposed research
- cover any legal and ethical considerations of collecting, releasing or storing the data, including consent, confidentiality, anonymisation, security and other ethical issues
- include any challenges to data sharing, for example copyright or data confidentiality, with possible solutions discussed to optimise data sharing
Please enter ‘not applicable’ if you are not generating any new dataset as part of your programme.
Primary discipline classification
Word limit: 5
Enter the primary discipline for this project.
Select one primary area of research from the list of social disciplines below and enter into the text field. This information is used to determine eligibility for ESRC funding and to assist in the selection of appropriate reviewers:
- area studies
- demography
- development studies
- economics
- education
- environmental planning
- history
- human geography
- law & legal studies
- linguistics
- management & business studies
- political science & international studies
- psychology
- science & technology studies
- social anthropology
- social policy
- social work
- sociology
- tools, technologies & methods
Additional documentation
Please upload one document in PDF format which includes the documents as submitted to CENTRE-UB.
Your uploaded PDF document must include the below attachments as these are mandatory and must be included:
- completed application form as submitted to CENTRE-UB
- applicant CV as submitted to CENTRE-UB (maximum two sides of A4)
- abstract of PhD thesis (abstract of the submitted thesis on the basis of which your PhD was awarded) as submitted to CENTRE-UB
- partner organisation supporting statement (maximum one side of A4) and summary CV of mentor as submitted to CENTRE-UB (maximum two sides of A4)
- statement of head of school or department as submitted to CENTRE-UB (maximum one side of A4)
- University of Birmingham mentor statement and summary CV as submitted to CENTRE-UB (maximum two sides of A4)
- if applicable, data management plan as submitted to CENTRE-UB (maximum three sides of A4)
