The British Academy announces new Talent Development Awards to nurture skills and promote innovative research methods in SHAPE

The British Academy today announces funding for 22 UK-based researchers under a new pilot scheme aiming to nurture current and future generations of talent in the humanities and social sciences.

Funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the 22 Talent Development Awards will promote the acquisition and development of skills in core areas such as quantitative skills, interdisciplinarity, data science, digital humanities and languages.

The awards are up to £10,000 in value and tenable for a period of up to 12 months. They will enable the awardees to acquire and advance skills in relevant areas, as well as promote innovative research methods through skills development, collaboration or dissemination. In doing so, the scheme will raise the quality of advanced quantitative and data science skills used in research, create new opportunities for knowledge and skills to exchange across disciplines and sectors, and promote language learning and the transferable skills that language learning provides.

With an emphasis on skills development and knowledge exchange, the scheme is distinct from some of the Academy’s more established funding schemes which focus on research excellence.

Examples of the proposals funded include:

• Sensing the Surface: A Computer Vision Analysis of Claude Monet's Water Lily Paintings – Dr Kathryn Brown, Loughborough University
• JUMPSTART: Joining Up Methodological Practices for Studying Texts with Advanced Research Training – Dr James Cummings, Newcastle University
• Text-Mining and International Relations: A Methodological Assessment through the Analysis of Islamist Discourse – Dr Filippo Dionigi, University of Bristol
• Videographic Scholarship: Innovation and Collaboration in Research Practice – Dr Lucy Donaldson, University of St Andrews
• In Another’s Skin: How Embodiment and Context Affect Gender Stereotypes – Dr Harry Farmer, University of Greenwich
• Understanding the Psychological Risk Factors for Believing Political Misinformation by Merging Neural Network and Multiple Regression Models – Dr Paul Rauwolf, Bangor University
• The Future is Multilingual: Developing Language Skills and Expanding Research Engagement –Dr Kaitlyn Zavaleta, De Montfort University
• Computational Legal Studies: Integrating Data Analytics in Legal Research and Teaching – Dr Mimi Zou, University of Reading.

Professor Simon Swain FBA, Vice-President for Research and Higher Education at the British Academy, said:

“We are delighted to award these prestigious Talent Development Awards to what is an exceptional cohort of scholars. The British Academy has always prioritised supporting current and upcoming talent in the humanities and social sciences and these awards will help us to do so at a time when rapid technological developments are creating new opportunities for innovative research. As well as supporting the scholars to pursue their chosen areas of research, the funding will allow them to experiment with new research methods and forge fruitful collaborations with others. We look forward to seeing the results of their work.”