RIS Active-Research and Innovation Services News

Next month’s Grants Factory session will provide an insight into how the EPSRC assesses applications.

•  Firstly, UoK Senior Academics who are experienced EPSRC panellists, from across the Faculty will give an overview of the priorities and processes of the EPSRC, outlining how your proposal will be assessed;
• Secondly, there will be a ‘mock’ panel, at which you will assess, discuss and rank a number of real applications, and decide which should be funded. This session will be chaired and guided by the experienced panellists. This is invaluable to help understand the issues and difficulties faced by the EPSRC panels, which will, in turn, help you to focus and draft your application more effectively.

Given the nature of the mock panel exercise, places are strictly limited, and allocated on a first come, first served basis, although priority will be given to those currently working on an application. If you have recently had an EPSRC application (First Grant, Responsive mode or a Targeted call), sent out for external review and subsequently rejected or funded and you would like your application to be used in the mock panel, please get in touch. Or if you have an EPSRC application in an advanced draft stage, this could also be used for the mock panel.

Lunch, tea and coffee will be available. The event is free, but do let Helen Leech know if you would like to take part or if you have any questions.

The ESRC in partnership with a range of funding partners has launched a call to bid for funding to undertake evidence programmes to underpin a new and independent What Works Centre for Wellbeing.

The ESRC is commissioning four wellbeing themed evidence programmes to look at what works for wellbeing:

• cross-cutting capability
• work, learning and wellbeing
• community wellbeing
• culture, sport and wellbeing

The Centre has initial funding of over £4.3 million over three years, and the funding available for each evidence programme is between £875,000 and £1.063 million (100 per cent fEC) over three years.

We’re already aware of interest from across the University, but a real challenge is the published deadline for full bids – 2^nd December, although we understand that the ESRC will be revising this date.

Research Services are proposing to hold a workshop about the call this Wednesday afternoon, 12^th November, 1-3 pm.

A couple of points to note:

• this call is not about “health” wellbeing – there is already a What Works – Health centre in existence.
• this call is focused on secondary data analysis/systematic reviews, not the generation of new primary data. Although there is likely to be a need for that in a future call.

Please let Brian Lingley (b.lingley@kent.ac.uk) know if you are interested in this opportunity, and whether you will be able to attend on Wednesday. If you are unable to attend but would like to participate in the bid, drop me an email outlining your area of interest, and which evidence programme is most appropriate.

Next month’s Grants Factory session will provide an insight into how the BBSRC assesses applications. This session follows on from previously successful EPSRC mock panels, and will consist of two parts:

•  Firstly, four experienced panelists, Prof Martin Warren, Prof Dave Brown, Dr Ian Blomfield and Prof Mick Tuite, will give a brief overview of the priorities and processes of the BBSRC, outlining how your application will be assessed;
• Secondly, the experienced panelists will lead a ‘mock’ panel, at which you will assess, discuss and rank a number of real applications, and decide which should be funded. This is invaluable to help understand the issues and difficulties faced by the BBSRC panels, which will, in turn, help you to focus and draft your application more effectively.

Given the nature of the mock panel exercise, places are strictly limited, and allocated on a first come, first served basis, although priority will be given to those currently working on an application. The session is open to all academics/postdocs from any school planning to apply to the BBSRC in the next year.

Tea and coffee will be available. The event is free, but do let Helen Leech (h.leech@kent.ac.uk) know if you would like to take part.

The Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KIASH) is running a series of seminars to discuss broad issues affecting a number of disciplines. I can imagine these being of real interest beyond the Humanities, and colleagues in both the Sciences and Social Sciences are very welcome to come along.

More details below. Do get in touch with Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald or Prof Ray Laurence if you want to know more about the series.

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KIASH – Humanities 2015

Humanities 2015 is a new initiative from KIASH which seeks to investigate how research is done right across the Faculty of Humanities. We have assembled panels of academics to discuss what their research is currently investigating, why research is important to them, to the University, to their scholarly community and to the public. We will also discuss how academics balance time for all their research ideas, priorities such as the REF, and all the myriad things each academic does in a 21st century university.

The panels will be held over lunchtimes throughout this 50^th anniversary year – see below for this term’s schedule. Appropriately, we begin the series with Practice as Research (PaR) – an area of research arguably not always understood and with perhaps different priorities to subject areas that are monograph-heavy. Panels will be arranged on the basis to provide varied discussion, providing an opportunity for all in Humanities to meet colleagues from other disciplines, engage in cross-disciplinary discussion and to come away with a better understanding of what research is in 2015. At the end of all the panels, a short film will be produced that will draw together the results of these discussions.

Autumn Term

11 Nov – Practice as Research

Timothy Brittain-Catlin (Architecture), Oliver Double (Arts), Shona Illingworth (SMFA)

12.00pm – 2.00pm Stacey LT1

26 Nov – International Scholars

Frances Guerin (Arts), Marialena Nikolopoulou (Architecture), Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (SECL)

12.00pm – 2.00pm Darwin LT1
8 December – Interdisciplinarity

Nichola Shaughnessy (Arts), Will Pettigrew (History), Jon Williamson (SECL)
12.00pm – 2.00pm Darwin LT1

Kent, as the UK’s European university, is strongly supportive of the development of collaborations with European partners. In order to facilitate these, funding is available to cover the cost of developing exchanges and visits, such as those listed in the boxes below.

All research-active staff are invited to apply to the Fund. Details of how to do so are available here.

The Science Faculty has a £40,000 investment fund to spend in 2014/15 on research activities. As in previous years, the fund will be used to support longer term development of research in the Faculty. It will be spent in three tranches.

1. Open round for bids. Total amount available £15,000. Bids to be received by Thursday 20 November 2014. Results will be announced early December 2014.
2. Open round for bids. Total amount available £15,000. Bids to be received by Thursday 12 March 2015. Results will be announced mid-March 2015.
3. Open round for bids. Total amount available £5,000. Bids to be received by Thursday 14 May 2015. Results will be announced mid-May 2015.

In addition a Fighting Fund of £5000 is available on demand at the discretion of the Director of Research for urgent bids.

Criteria: Excellence. Make a case that this funding will develop your research over the next few years. For example, it may deliver/enable some combination of high quality research, grow your international reputation, prepare for a grant bid (including Horizon 2020), or help to host expert visitors. Funding applications are open to both lecturers, etc and post-docs. Applications from early career researchers are particularly welcomed.

[Note that the PVC (Research and Innovation) also has a fund which will be used this year to support twinning arrangements with EU universities ranked in the top 200 worldwide.]

How to bid: Bidding will operate in two steps.

Step 1. Send 1 page of A4 maximum (font: Ariel 11pt, or Times New Roman 12pt minimum) case to your School’s Director of Research (DoR). The format must be PDF. Explain the criteria by which we will be able to assess your achievements afterwards. Include a timeline for the spend and activity.

Submit this to your DoR at least one week before the Faculty deadline.

Step 2. Each School DoR writes a single accompanying statement of support, commenting on all the applications from their school. It is essential that this statement explains for each application

(i)      how the School supports research, and why normal School funds are not available;

(ii)     that the proposal is acceptable to the school; and

(iii)    its value to the School from a School and discipline specific context.

The School DoR should submit their School’s applications and the accompanying statement of support (PDF) to J.L.Walpole@kent.ac.uk (the Dean’s PA) by email by 5 pm on the closing date.

Note: All funds awarded must be spent by the end of July 2015. You will be required to submit a final report explaining the outcomes of this investment.

Judges: Faculty DoR, the Dean, a School DoR, a Research Funding Officer and the FAM will assess. If necessary other parties may be added to the group. We expect to be over-subscribed and will have to exercise judgement.

Amounts? This is up to you. £500, a few thousand…it is highly unlikely that a single bid will win it all (on that sort of scale you need School or external funding).

More information is available on the website:http://www.kent.ac.uk/stms/research/index.html

To recognise exceptional achievements in research, and to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, the University is this year launching a new Research Prizes scheme. As well as recognising the most outstanding work in each Faculty, there will be specific prizes for excellent work undertaken by early career researchers and by doctoral students.

All the details are available here. Do give some consideration to your own work, or that of colleagues who you feel have produced exceptional work recently, and whose outstanding achievements deserve to be recognised by the University and the wider community.

If you have any questions about the scheme don’t hesitate to get in touch with Phil Ward in Research Services.

Research Services is linking up with Information Services to run an afternoon of Open Access. This is an opportunity for anyone working at Kent to find out more about what it means to publish via open access routes, what support is available, and what costs are incurred.

Schedule of events

• Opening address introducing Open Access at Kent
• Lightning talks covering:
  • KRIMSON – the new system which collates Kent’s research activities
  • KAR – the University’s institutional repository
  • ORCID – how to get your unique researcher identifier
  • Research Data Management
  • The current APC (article processing charges) process
  • Copyright
  • Open Journal System
• Final address by Steven Hill from HEFCE

The foyer of Woolf College will be an Open Access marketplace, with stands for those giving lightning talks to allow further conversation for those dropping in during the afternoon. There will also be training sessions on KAR and KRIMSON and the opportunity to sign up for an ORCID.

For more information and to sign up to attend go to http://www.kent.ac.uk/library/research/open-access/index.html?tab=events