Let it flow, let it flow, let it flow

by Alex Hulkes

In the spring of this year we published a blog that described how applicants to RCUK (as it was then) applied across research council boundaries. This more wintery post takes a crisp early-morning canter through an aspect of what is now cross-UKRI behaviour – the flows of funding between the seven research councils.

How social scientists can get involved in the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund

by Charlie Dormer

A new set of research and innovation challenges has recently been announced through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF), providing major opportunities for the social sciences to collaborate with other academic disciplines and businesses to solve specific economic and societal challenges.

ISCF is made up of major industrial and societal challenges in different areas of research, where academics work with businesses and other partners to find innovative solutions.

The challenges are being announced in batches each year known as ‘waves’. The latest batch – wave 2 – was announced in November 2017, and the first competitions for each challenge are now being launched.

Supporting the next generation

Professor Jane Elliott took up the post of Economic and Social Research Council Chief Executive and Research Councils UK International Champion in October 2014. 

Before joining the ESRC Professor Elliott was Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Education, London, the Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies and the Director of CLOSER (Cohorts and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources) programme. In September 2017 Jane will take up a role as Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter.

A key priority for ESRC is to support the development of the next generation of social scientists. Formal consultations, as well as individual conversations, suggest this has widespread support among established academics, many of whom will remember the employment insecurity that they experienced in the early years of their career.

Finding the right chemistry for a good proposal

Alex Hulkes is Strategic Lead for Insights at the ESRC. Here he highlights new analysis which demonstrates what elements could make a successful proposal.

My last blog looked at demand management. This time I’m looking at the quality of proposals, as judged by our peer review processes, which are submitted to ESRC.

Application and award success rates – what the data tells us

Alex Hulkes is Strategic Lead for Insights at the ESRC, and is responsible for developing our ability to evaluate and carry out data-informed analysis of ESRC investments, policy and operation.

Here he highlights why we publish our application and award data, and what conclusions we might be able to draw from it.

You may have noticed that we’ve just published a new set of application and award data showing the number of applications and awards from each research organisation (RO) that has applied for ESRC funding in the last five financial years. The set also contains similar data on numbers of applications and awards based on the research disciplines used to classify grants.