British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Collaboration on Understanding Communities

The British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation invite applications from practitioners, policymakers and early and mid-career researchers across the UK to participate in a research and policy innovation workshop and develop innovative and interdisciplinary research proposals that advance our organisations’ shared interest in enhancing people’s lives in the context of their communities. At least £500,000 in funding is available to deliver the research proposals that result from the workshop and more funding may subsequently be made available to develop the programme of work if proposals and projects demonstrate sufficient promise.

The British Academy’s Cohesive Societies programme aims to shed light, and develop suggestions for policy change, on how societies can remain cohesive in the face of rapid political, social, economic and technological change, drawing on a range of salient themes and policy areas for both government and civil society. The Nuffield Foundation, whose aim is to advance social wellbeing with research that informs social policy, has identified limitations in the collective understanding of the role of community in social and individual wellbeing in the UK, and its effect on the ability of interventions to address disadvantage, as a major social policy challenge of the 2020s. These interests also resonate with policymakers’ seeming reorientation towards greater consideration of place and community.

We are aiming for this programme to support genuinely new approaches, produce mutual and lasting benefits for researchers, policymakers and practitioners, strengthen the relationships between these three key communities within the policy ecosystem, and find tangible, evidence-based policy solutions that could have an important and positive impact on society.

The workshop will take place at a series of virtual sessions from 13 to 24 September 2021, with a final virtual session on 13 October 2021.

For more details about the programme and eligibility requirements, please see the scheme guidance notes.