Global Convening Programmes: frequently asked questions

You can read more about the call on the British Academy's website, as well as the detailed scheme notes.

Each expression of interest must include a core team of six to eight researchers based in the UK and internationally. This core team must include two programme leads. One of these must be based in the UK. In the wider team, there must be at least four participants not based in the UK. The wider team can include researchers from backgrounds within industry, policy or practice, which might include NGOs.

The Academy views the Humanities and Social Sciences broadly (see a list of subjects) but we would encourage you to get in touch if you are unsure about discipline eligibility. For this call, the two programme leads must be researchers in a discipline within the social sciences or the humanities, but the wider team can include researchers from wider disciplines.

This is a different style of activity that the Academy is aiming to support. This call is for programmes of internationally convened individual researchers, it is not a research project application in the usual form. You can read more about the call on the British Academy's website, as well as the detailed scheme notes.

The focus for this call is on networking globally, opening new fields of inquiry, harnessing research to address these challenges aiming to catalyse change in industry, practice, policy and society, and supporting collaborative exploration across disciplines and borders. The application form is focused on you articulating with your colleagues how you could take forward such an approach rather than requesting a justification how you will utilise the funding available as you would in a usual research project. As you will see there is no budget table in the form for this expression of interest for that reason. We would encourage you to consider the call in this different style of activity if you wish to apply.

It will not be possible to be funded through this call for a research project-type proposal. The Academy has other calls that support such activity. For example, a call we have open currently on Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research Projects.

The funding for the core team is intended to enable the researchers involved to have the time and space to work on the goals of the programme. This can be used flexibly. For example, for teaching load adjustments, postdoctoral support, research trips, fieldwork and other activities that support the research goals of the programme. The two programme leads from different disciplines will receive research support of £15,000 per annum each. The up-to-20 programme members from different disciplines will receive research support of £10,000 per annum each. A contribution of £10,000 will be provided to the programme lead(s) host institution. In addition, the Academy will hold a budget for three annual international meetings to bring together in person the programmes. Once awarded the programme through the UK host institution will also be able to have additional funding available to support early career researchers linked to the programme. This would normally enable the support of two early career researchers. The Academy will also provide further competitive funding biannually for knowledge translation grants during the course of the award to enable members of the programme to work with a range of counterparts beyond the programmes on matters related to industry, policy, practice and society.

This award will have two Programme Leads one of which must be based in the UK and which will act as the host institution. We have processes for transferring where a host institution is on an award which would be followed if this eventuality was raised such as to another member of the team based in the UK.

Applications must be related to one of the three thematic strands: Just Transitions, What is a good city?, Global (Dis)Order. We do not expect applications to address all three.

The eligibility section states ‘One of the programme leads must hold an established role in an eligible UK university or research institute’. Please get in touch at [email protected] for details on how to register host organisations on Flexigrant.

If accepted to the second stage the team will be invited for a two-day UK based workshop in preparation for the submission of the final proposal. The Academy will fund this.