British Academy awards £1.3m to 145 small research projects across the UK

Examining problem gambling among university students, analysing the role of philosophy in improving understanding of mental health, and assessing the impact of fake news on freedom of choice; the British Academy has awarded £1.3 million to support 145 research projects for the 2019 round of Small Research Grants.

The awards for this round are supported by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust.

The awards comprise the latest round of the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants funding scheme. Worth up to £10,000 each and tenable for a maximum of 24 months, these grants are provided to cover the cost of the expenses arising from a defined research project.

The grants meet a clear need for researchers in the humanities and social sciences. Often, they are used as a first grant opportunity by early career researchers or as seed funding leading to the development of larger projects.

In this round, 55% of successful recipients are women with awards made to scholars based at 59 different institutions as well as to four independent scholars.

Some of the projects set to receive funding include:

• Modern Slavery Policy from Below: A Pilot Study Exploring the Experiences of Migrant and Refugee Community Organisations – Dr Lorena Arocha, Lecturer in Contemporary Slavery, The Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull


• Does an Influencer Have to Exist to be Authentic? – Dr Carmen Lopez, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Department of Marketing, University of Brighton


• Placing Charity in a Populist Age: A Political Geography of Far-right Housing, Food and Veterans Activism in the UK – Dr Anthony Ince, Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University       


• Evaluating the ‘Work-life Balance’ Framework: A Pilot Project to Gain Insights from a World Leading Work-life Balanced Society – Professor Tracey Warren, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham  


• Designing a Model of Restorative Justice for Victims of Online Child Abusive Images – Professor Suzanne Ost, Professor of Law, Law School, Lancaster University   


• Adept at Adaptation: Disability, AI, and Voice Technologies in Social Care Services – Dr Saul Albert, Lecturer in Social Psychology, School of Social Science, Loughborough University


• The Other King James Version: Recovering an Unpublished Early-Modern Biblical Translation by Ambrose Ussher (d. 1629) – Dr Nicholas Hardy, Birmingham Fellow, Faculty of English Literature, University of Birmingham


• Postimperial Homecoming: The Dissolution of Empire and Reciprocal Return Migrations of the Japanese in Korea and Koreans in Japan – Dr Deokhyo Choi, Lecturer in Korean Studies, School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield.

 The next call for the Small Research Grants (2019-20) is currently open and will close at 5pm UK time on 6 November 2019.