The AHRC today announced further details of the changes and enhancements to its Fellowships scheme as outlined in its Delivery Plan (2011-2015) and the arrangements for implementing these changes.
The Fellowships scheme has been revised to develop and promote visionary individuals who set research agendas, lead research communities and provide intellectual leadership in their own disciplines and beyond. Fellows funded under the revised scheme will have a transformative impact on their subject area and also act as advocates for the value and benefit of arts and humanities research to publics beyond academia. In addition, the scheme’s early career route will build leadership capacity equipping individuals with outstanding potential to lead research agendas in the 21st century.
The Fellowships scheme will remain open to outstanding research proposals on any topic and within any subject and discipline covered by the AHRC’s remit. It will continue to support concentrated time for individual research activities. However, in addition, part of the Fellowship period should include time spent working with others to demonstrate leadership or leadership potential, through, for example: research networking or other activities aimed at inspiring other researchers; knowledge exchange, such as collaboration with organisations outside the HE sector; international collaborations; public engagement activities or interdisciplinary engagement. The extended duration of Fellowships and flexibility in time commitments will support such activities.
As outlined in its Delivery Plan, and following extensive consultation, the AHRC has reviewed its Fellowships scheme to ensure that it complements other provision (e.g. the fellowships schemes of other funders such as the British Academy) and does not duplicate support for research time offered by institutions from their own funds. In particular, given constraints on our funding, we wish to maximise the contribution that the scheme makes to our key strategic objectives, for example in terms of enhancing national capability in strategically important areas, developing research leadership, supporting early career researchers and encouraging research collaborations. The Fellowships will be a partnership with Research Organisations in identifying research leaders (or leaders of the future) and supporting their leadership development.
We are also consolidating support previously provided through our separate Knowledge Transfer Fellowships scheme into a single Fellowships scheme to ensure that it can provide seamless provision for a wide range of research and knowledge exchange activities.
Applications will be for between £50,000 and £250,000 fEC and will be for periods of between 6 and 18 months (or 6-24 months for applications from early career researchers). Although the AHRC will maintain the current budget for the Fellowships scheme, funding for the Fellowships will become more selective than at present due to the larger average size of awards. We therefore anticipate that fewer, more prestigious, Fellowships will be awarded.
We will continue to use highlight notices and other measures to encourage applications in strategic areas identified in our Delivery Plan and may make additional awards to support Fellowships in strategically important areas. Initially the highlight notices for AHRC’s four Themes and Connected Communities will be extended under the revised scheme. Fellows applying under the highlight notice will be expected to play a significant leadership role within the relevant Theme.
Peer review will remain the basis for assessing the quality and significance of Fellowship applications. Additional assessment criteria will be added to reflect the expectations for inclusion of leadership development activities and stronger institutional support.
The revised scheme will be open to applications from early January 2012. As previously announced the current scheme will close to new applications at 4pm on 17 October 2011.
For further information on the revised Fellowships scheme, please see below -
Full details of the revised Fellowships scheme (pdf 123kb)
Fellowships changes FAQs (pdf 84kb)