The British Academy awards £1.25 million to small research projects across the UK

Estimating the effect of crime on house prices, exploring how sleep affects false memory and examining Jewish attempts in the 1930s to counter the rise of fascism through litigation and legislation; these are just three of 143 new small research projects awarded funding by the British Academy.

Altogether the Academy, in partnership with the Leverhulme Trust and a range of other funders, has awarded £1.25 million to 143 projects, five of which will be led by independent scholars.

Funding for the Small Research Grants 2021 is provided by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Sino-British Fellowship Trust and the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.

The British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grants funding scheme awards up to £10,000 to academics in the humanities and social sciences – including disciplines such as History, Philosophy, Linguistics, Sociology and Business and Management Studies – helping to cover the cost of expenses arising from a specific research project.

Tenable for a maximum of 24 months, the awards meet a clear need among researchers in the humanities and social sciences as they provide seed funding for pilot and development stages of larger projects and frequently offer the first grant opportunity for early career researchers.

The full list of the 2021 round of Small Research Grants is published online and examples include:

• When the Joke Misfires: Dealing with Offensive Humour in Online Interaction – Dr Chi-Hé Elder, University of East Anglia
• Scholarly Edition of Wyndham Lewis, Men Without Art for Oxford University Press Collected Works of Wyndham Lewis – Professor Rebecca Beasley, University of Oxford
• Historians on the Medieval Robin Hood – Professor Stephen Rigby, Independent Scholar
• Channelling Identities. Borders, Belonging and the Idea of a Channel Tunnel in France and Britain, 1802-1994 – Dr Alison Carrol, Brunel University London
• Liberal Democracy, Fascist Antisemitism, and Jewish Self-defence, 1932-1938 – Professor David Fraser, University of Nottingham
• The Impact of Furlough Scheme on Level Four Workers (Professionals) – Dr Amir Keshtiban, Northumbria University
• Recollections May Vary: How Does Sleep Affect False Memory? – Dr Matthew Mak, University of York
• Estimating the Effect of Crime (Maps) on House Prices Using a Natural Experiment – Meng-Le Zhang, University of Sheffield
• Hereditary Politics: The Role of Gender and Kinship in Voters’ Evaluations of Political Candidates – Dr Shan-Jan Sarah Liu, University of Edinburgh
• The Socio-politics of Digital Money: Examining the Motives for and Potential Consequences of the Shift Towards Cryptocurrencies – Dr Andrew Hook, University of Sussex
• Recovery Position? Narratives of Community-led Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic: The case of the East Midlands – Dr Donna Champion, Nottingham Trent University
• Understanding Risk in Unregulated Markets: The Case of Men Who Purchase Sex – Dr Giulia Berlusconi, University of Surrey
• Criminal Territories in Rio de Janeiro – Dr Nicholas Barnes, University of St Andrews.

The next round of BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants is currently open for applications until 17:00 on 10 November 2021.