2024/25 Call for Major Project Applications & Fellowship Nominations

This call has now closed. 

The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) is a home for growing big ideas.  We support a broad and inclusive interdisciplinary community from across the full spectrum of Durham academics, where different perspectives are brought together to develop creative approaches to interesting and important problems. 

The IAS is now launching its call for Major Projects – investment of ca. £40,000 - £61,000 per project in major interdisciplinary research ideas across the University. We are inviting applications for Major Projects which should be genuinely interdisciplinary, innovative and ambitious. They should ideally have both short- and longer-term objectives. In relation to longer-term objectives, we encourage projects that have the potential to build towards research of the scale and ambition suited to large programme or centre type funding. All projects must involve at least two departments and ideally involve collaboration across faculty boundaries.

MAJOR PROJECTS (to run in academic year 2024/25)

These will be ambitious projects working across at least two disciplines and ideally across faculty boundaries. Successful projects will be supported with:

• 2 Durham Academic PIs awarded Christopherson-Knott Fellowships to buy out their time for 1 term to work on the project
• A minimum of 2 high quality external fellows to visit Durham for a period of 1 term to work on the project
• Research support of up to £3.5k for activities during the project
• Financial support to build activities in the year running up to the project term
• Further financial support to continue the momentum of the work from the project term in the following year
• Access to the facilities and resources of the IAS

Anyone considering applying is encouraged to discuss the process and their project with the Directors of the IAS. Please contact the ias.manager@durham.ac.uk for more information.

MAJOR PROJECTS

The IAS invites colleagues from across the university to apply for project funding and to nominate world-leading collaborators to come to Durham as IAS fellows or visiting scholars.

An initial brief project outline should be submitted by email to Linda Crowe at ias.manager@durham.ac.uk by midday Friday 13 January 2023 using the Form attached below.

All applicants (PIs) will be invited to the IAS on either Monday 16 or Tuesday 17 January (morning) to briefly discuss their project and ideas with the IAS Directorate. This affords the opportunity for discussion, suggestions and recommendations, guidance and support to each project proposal as they go forward to a full application.

Each proposal will be assigned an IAS Director who will facilitate application development ahead of the full Major Project application. The date for full project application is midday Thursday 23 March 2023 (this date has been extended from 16 March) using the application -form noted below.

Applications will be selected based on the following criteria (these are equally weighted):

Novelty and ambition: to what extent does the project open new perspectives and create new inter-disciplinary synergies?

Rigour: to what extent does the project employ appropriate and state-of-the-art concepts and methods, and/or develop promising new ones?

Clarity and quality of objectives: how clear and realistic are the intended outcomes; what impact will there be on Durham University’s research capacity and international competitiveness; how well does it fit with University and Department research strategies?

Quality of the proposed research team: track record relative to career stage, including notable publications, awards, prizes and other esteem indicators, complementarity and suitability to the project objectives of team members’ expertise, evidence of interest in interdisciplinary perspectives; in the case of the PIs, evidence of intellectual leadership/leadership potential

Decisions will be relayed to all applicants by Monday 17 April 2023.

FORMS AND APPLICATION DEADLINES