British Academy Conferences Scheme 2025-26: Application Notes
Download the application notesSUMMARY
Summary table
When your application form is complete, all sections on this summary table will be marked as ‘Complete’. The ‘Complete’ status will only appear when all the mandatory fields in that section have been completed. All mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk ‘*’. Only then will a ‘Submit’ button appear for you to be able to submit your application.
ELIGIBILITY
Employing organisation
All applications must be approved by your employing organisation authorities e.g. research grants office, finance department, etc. Once you have completed and submitted your application, the approving department will receive an email asking them to approve submit the application to the British Academy by the submission deadline.
It is strongly recommended that the applicant maintains an open dialogue with their approving department as the British Academy cannot be held responsible for emails being caught in spam filters or not being received.
It is your responsibility to ensure that you complete your application in time for your employing institution to process it and provide their approval by the closing date.
Please allow at least five working days for this process. Once your approving department has checked your application, they will contact you if any changes are required, please note if changes need to be made these will have to be done before the closing deadline, they cannot be done afterwards.
Co-applicants
All applications must have one lead applicant, and only they will have access to the application form. All correspondence is sent via the Flexi-Grant® GMS to the lead applicant.
There is no limit on the number of eligible co-applicants that can be named.
LEAD APPLICANT DETAILS
Lead applicant contact details
You can update your personal details by checking ‘my account’ and selecting the link to ‘my contact details’ and ‘my organisation’ and ensuring the relevant details are up to date.
LEAD APPLICANT CAREER SUMMARY
Statement of qualifications and career
Please give details of up to four qualifications in reverse chronological order.
Present appointment, employing institution and department
Please give details of your current appointment.
Applications are welcomed from independent or retired scholars, who should select ‘independent scholar’ here and select this as their ‘organisation’ in the eligibility section.
PhD confirmation
Please confirm that you have a PhD. If you are an established scholar with relevant equivalent experience, but no doctorate, please select 'no' and indicate in the 'personal statement' field why you are eligible for consideration.
Personal statement
This field is optional, but may be used, for example, in providing information regarding interruptions to an academic career.
Publications, unpublished research
Please list up to six relevant publications to date in reverse chronological order under publications; and any unpublished studies previously funded by any agency, including the British Academy (if applicable). Please give details of planned publication dates or explain why the research has not yet been published.
Previous support dates/previous support description
Please give details of any research applications submitted to the British Academy within the last five years.
CONFERENCE PROPOSAL
Title/summary
Please add a succinct title and a short description of your proposed conference (150 words maximum). Clear and concise descriptions are recommended for marketing and promotion purposes.
Details of conference
Please give more information about the aims and objectives of the conference. Please refer to the bullet points included in this question to steer your answer.
Preferred conference date
Please state the month in which you would prefer your conference to take place. If you can be flexible over dates, please indicate this here.
Length of conference
Please indicate whether your proposal is for an in-person, hybrid or online conference taking place over one, two or three days.
Please note that conferences held at the British Academy must take place between 09:30 and 17:00 with a recommended start time of 10.00.
Venue
Please indicate where you would like your conference to take place and indicate if you have provisionally secured the use of this venue. Please provide a reserve venue other than the British Academy.
List of potential speakers
Provide a list of potential speakers (including their job titles) who would create a balanced programme, giving a brief outline of the topics to be covered. You should consider diversity in all its forms when making your selection.
Preference will be given to proposals with a list of speakers who have agreed to speak and provide a written paper. If speakers haven’t given final confirmation, you must secure the permission of each individual speaker to be listed as a potential speaker in this proposal.
For in-person/hybrid conferences, please indicate which speakers may need to present virtually rather than in-person.
For online conferences, please bear in mind the location of your speakers - and their time zones - when drawing up your programme.
If any session is to take the form of a panel discussion, rather than a sequence of speakers, please indicate this in the other comments box.
Convenors are expected to have an active role in the conference, as either speakers or chairs.
Policy themes
If your proposal relates to any of the Academy’s policy themes, please confirm which are most applicable. More information can be found here.
Source of funding
Please provide details of other support given or applied for in connection with the current proposal.
Please indicate whether any other grant applications relating to this conference proposal have been submitted to any other funder. Applications submitted to the Academy by separate applicants for the same conference will not be accepted.
The Academy has no objection to its grants being held in conjunction with awards from other bodies if there is no duplication of expenditure. Applicants are requested to keep the Academy informed of the outcomes of any other applications by email to [email protected]. Failure to do so may jeopardise the application’s prospects of success. In cases where simultaneous applications to the Academy and to another funding agency covering the same elements of a project are both successful, the applicant will be asked to choose which award to accept.
PUBLICATION
Publication by the British Academy
While recognising that the criteria for a successful conference and a good publication are not identical, the British Academy believes in the importance of dissemination to scholarly readerships.
There is a presumption that the convenors of successful conference proposals will aspire to publish an edited collection of papers arising from the conference as a volume in the Proceedings of the British Academy series.
Please give details of your publication plans here, including confirmation of whether you intend in due course to submit to the British Academy a proposal to publish an edited collection of papers arising from the conference.
Please outline any initial thoughts you may have at this stage on how you intend to shape what comes out of the conference for publication.
We appreciate that a conference may result in more than one output. If you intend the conference should give rise to other formal academic publications in addition to the publication issued by the British Academy, please indicate what other publication options you intend to pursue.
PROMOTION & MARKETING
Promotion of the conference
Please explain the principal target audience(s) at which the conference will be pitched and provide your own rough estimate of the number of delegates (excluding speakers and chairs) who might be expected to attend. What channels are available to promote the conference? What scope is there for promoting the themes of the conference more widely in the media?
FINANCIAL DETAILS
Financial details/ justification (please see Table 1 in the Appendix for a list of eligible costs)
All convenors should approach this as if the conference is being staged at a venue other than the British Academy. If your preferred venue of choice is the British Academy, please cost up the conference as if it were taking place at your reserve venue.
Applicants should prepare accurate costings for the proposed expenses and should be particularly careful to be accurate with the resources required. Please do not use ‘£’ signs in the amount boxes.
Costs should be clearly itemised and justified. If the Academy is being asked to support only a proportion of the total costs, please explain this clearly in the justifications box. Please note that grants are cash-limited, and there is no scope for supplementation of an award. Projects must be fully costed from the outset.
- Online Conferences: If you want to run your own online conference, please detail the costs for this (e.g. streaming costs). If you would like to request that the Academy’s events team manages your online conference, please enter: ‘£3,000 – British Academy online hosted’ as the cost. This is because we will handle the logistical and financial elements of the online event delivery. Please add any other expected eligible costs that do not fall under technical delivery.
- Hybrid/In-Person Conferences:
- Venue hire: Please add the total hire cost for your host. If you intend to hold a post-event reception for attendees, please ensure that you include the evening venue hire cost for this occasion.
- Accommodation and travel: You can apply for support for a maximum of 8 speakers per day (16 speakers across a two-day conference), excluding chairs. Chairs must be UK based and ideally will be a conference speaker. Chairs will be unlikely to be regarded as a priority for support (unless they are a convenor), but if you can make a case for them being included, please also add costings for their travel and accommodation. Costings should be fair estimates, for example:
Accommodation (2-day conference)
1 night – UK-based speakers.
2 nights – Europe-based speakers.
3 nights – Speakers based outside of Europe.
£75-150 per night outside of London.
£150-250 per night in London.
- Travel: Please estimate economy travel (flights/trains) based on your speaker’s locations. The Academy will not cover business or first-class travel, or the use of taxis, other than in exceptional cases (such as certified medical need). The Academy is committed to reducing the environmental impact of the travel we fund. We expect the people we fund to choose travel that has a lower carbon footprint, where this is practical.
- AV/Filming: Please cost up the AV services and technical assistance needed for your conference based on the venue or supplier. Please also outline any filming/broadcast costs. Use of Academy’s AV and digital platform (Zoom/Vimeo) is only available for conferences run by British Academy’s events team.
- Catering (daytime): Please include the daytime catering costs.
- Catering (evening): The Academy will consider requests for evening catering. Either a post-event reception for all attendees OR post-event reception or dinner for speakers only. Evening occasions can be held at your venue or at another suitable venue such as a restaurant. Costings should be modest; i.e. a reception should be based on two drinks per person.
British Academy / Wellcome Trust Special Fund
The Academy reserves the right to consider applications who have not requested Wellcome Trust funding to be considered within this field, if we feel the application is relevant.
EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES
This section is optional; however, the Academy would greatly appreciate it if you can complete the details to assist us in our diversity monitoring. The British Academy is committed to its policy of equal opportunity in the provision of its grants and awards.
This information will be kept separately from the rest of your application and will not be seen by those involved in making decisions in the selection process, including referees etc.
LEAD APPLICANT REFEREE STATEMENT
Applicants are required to nominate one referee and to ensure that the supporting statement from their chosen referee is submitted on the British Academy Flexi-Grant® Grant Management System (GMS) by the application submission deadline. We strongly advise that you complete your application as early as possible to allow your referee enough time to provide their reference in the system. The reference must be received before you to submit the application for approval by your employing organisation ahead of the final deadline of 24 January 2024, 17:00 GMT.
Your referee should be familiar with your proposal and able to comment on your abilities, in addition to the academic quality and scholarly importance of the conference, the focus of the conference programme and theme(s), the likely impact on scholarship, the wider significance and interest, the scholarly standing of and contribution to be made by the named key speakers, and the intended outputs. The reference may be supplied by a scholar based outside the UK if you wish. There is no word limit for references. Most referees provide a 300–400-word statement.
Your referee must be from outside your own employing institution and from outside the employing institution of your co-proposer(s), if any. They must also not be directly involved with any aspect of the conference, for example as a speaker or a chair. References from scholars based outside the UK are acceptable. Please note that references must be provided through the Flexi-Grant® system. They cannot be provided as an email attachment or sent by post in hard copy. Any references received after the deadline, or outside of the system, or by another academic at the same institution as you or a co-applicant(s) will not be accepted, and your application will be withdrawn.