Highlight notices are intended to stimulate proposals under specified themes /strategic priorities in order to rapidly advance thinking or collaboration in these areas. Highlight notices are offered as opportunities within existing AHRC research schemes and are therefore assessed under the same criteria and assessment process.
Highlight notices are applied for a set period of time, for example 12 months, and the descriptions are usually intended to guide inquiry rather than prescribe individual research topics.
It is hoped, that successful proposals addressing highlight notices will help to build capacity in the specified area. For example, activities funded under a highlight notice for an AHRC theme could inform the future development of the theme by feeding back progress to the relevant subject team at the AHRC and representatives attending events related to the award or through coordinated activities organised by the AHRC.
Proposals relevant to the highlight notice can be submitted at any time while the highlight notice is in existence. All proposals will be assessed on their quality and individual merits according to standard scheme criteria. Although proposals addressing the highlight notice will not be given priority in the assessment or ranking of applications, supplementary funding may be made available to support additional highly rated applications addressing the highlight notices that may not have otherwise been funded under the existing scheme budgets. As a result, applications addressing highlight notices may have an increased chance of funding, but only if they fully meet the excellence criteria for the scheme and high international standards of scholarship, originality, quality and significance as judged through peer review.
If your proposal is funded under a highlight notice, you will be expected to produce a short report at the end of the award summarising the outcomes of the work undertaken and the potential for the future development of the topic of the highlight notice. For example by highlighting potential innovative new multi-disciplinary research, partnership, international links, researcher development, or knowledge exchange opportunities.
Current Highlight Notices
Highlight notices are currently applied to the following funding opportunities:
- Research Grants Standard and Early Career routes - for applications exploring the contribution of cross-disciplinary research in design to the Connected Communities Programme.
- Research Networking - for international collaboration (with Brazil, China, India or Taiwan) and public policy