About Us

The ESRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Fund develops and accelerates the effective impact which comes from excellent world-leading research, as well as supporting a range of initiatives for training and cultural change.

The fund helps Durham researchers to respond to impact opportunities in more flexible, responsive, and creative ways, and enables sustained, long-term engagement and effective collaboration with a wide range of external organisation partners in industry, business and communities, as well as policyholders, practitioners and the public.  

The Durham ESRC IAA Fund is led by Professor Chris Brown, who is Deputy Executive Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Social Sciences & Health, Professor in Education and a Fellow in the Durham Research Methods Centre. As Durham IAA Fund Director/academic lead, Chris says: ‘It is important that research can and does make a difference. Our goal is to produce and disseminate research that makes a positive difference to the global, national and regional challenges faced by governments and societies globally. The wide range of projects and initiatives funded through the ESRC IAA Fund show the immense societal and economic benefits the programme has helped foster’. 

Demand for ESRC IAA support is always high, with grants of between £1k-£15k for projects lasting between 3 months to 1 year being available to researchers.  The research must already have been carried out and there must be an external project partner and/or collaborator working with them on the project. The IAA provides grant funding for the testing and/or realising of the impact potential of their research and partnership.  

Durham IAA is currently supporting projects in a wide range of social science research areas such as baby sleep information, national engagement for wildlife monitoring, ethical challenges faced by social workers during Covid-19 and using models for educational policy. The fund has also supported many international projects in areas including as Brazil, South Africa, Suriname, Chile, Bangladesh, and Central Asia, to name a few.  

The Durham ESRC Impact Acceleration Account Round 2 Fund runs until 31st March 2023.