Scheme background
The University of Birmingham has been awarded funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account to support a four-year programme (April 2019 to March 2023) of activities to help accelerate impact from excellent social science research. As part of this programme, the ESRC IAA@UoB will fund four postdoctoral fellowships to recent graduates from one of our doctoral programmes to apply the outcomes of their social science research to real-life challenges through an approved plan of activities.
Each postdoctoral fellowship will fund up to three months' full-time salary for the postdoctoral fellow (or equivalent part-time hours), as well as a budget of up to £2,000 to carry out an impact and engagement project over the course of the fellowship. Applicants must be final year doctoral students who will have submitted their PhD thesis prior to the commencement of the project, or recent graduates. Please see the guidance notes below for full eligibility criteria and further detail about the scheme.
Timetable
For the current round of Postdoctoral Fellowship funding, applications are invited for submission by Friday 1 July 2022 for postdoctoral fellowships starting from 1 September 2022. All fellowships must be completed by 31 March 2022.
Support and Guidance
Postdoctoral fellowship projects will consist of a plan of relevant activities to develop and/or deliver the impact of the PhD student’s research outside academia. Activities might include engaging with non-academic partners to whom the research will be of relevance, co-developing mechanisms with partners to implement the findings, or developing a public engagement programme to disseminate the research. The ESRC IAA@UoB team can advise on possible activities and also help identify academic or practitioner mentors who have experience in developing similar engagement and impact activities.
- Applicants are reminded that this scheme is designed to fund impact and engagement activity. Funding will not be awarded to applicants proposing further academic or research activity. Applicants should consider the ESRC’s definition of non-academic impact when designing their postdoctoral fellowship project to ensure that their project falls within the remit of impact and engagement.
- Applicants may wish to consult the ESRC’s Impact toolkit for economic and social sciences when designing projects for advice on impact activity types and how to implement them successfully.
- Applicants may wish to discuss their applications with their School’s Impact Lead. Please contact the ESRC IAA team (esrciaa@contacts.bham.ac.uk) if you need advice on whom to contact.
Please see the full guidance notes below for further detail about the scheme.
How to apply
Full guidance notes
Please read the full ESRC IAA Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme Guidance before making an application.
Application form
All applications should be completed using the ESRC IAA Postdoctoral Fellowship Application Form. Completed application forms should be submitted to esrciaa@contacts.bham.ac.uk
The deadline for applications is Friday 1 July 2022.