{"id":366,"date":"2012-01-19T22:28:05","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T22:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=366"},"modified":"2012-01-23T22:56:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T22:56:37","slug":"leverhulme-trust-to-support-british-academy-small-research-grant-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=366","title":{"rendered":"Leverhulme Trust to support British Academy Small Research Grant scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
BA staff examine the Leverhulme memorandum of understanding<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The British Academy<\/a> announced yesterday<\/a> that agreement has been reached on a new collaborative agreement with the Leverhulme Trust<\/a> about funding for its Small Grants Scheme<\/a>.\u00a0 This is very good news for researchers in the humanities and the social sciences, and I’m interrupting my series of gloom-and-doom posts on what to do if your application is unsuccessful to inflict my take on some really good news upon you, oh gentle reader.\u00a0 And to see if I can set a personal best for the number of links in an opening sentence.\u00a0 Which I can.<\/p>\n

When I first started supporting grant-getting activity back in the halcyon days of 2005ish, the British Academy Small Grants scheme was a small and beautifully formed scheme.\u00a0 It funded up to \u00a37.5k or so for projects of up to two years, and only covered research expenses – so no funding for investigator time, replacement teaching, or overheads, but would cover travel, subsistence, transcription, data, casual research assistance etc and so on.\u00a0 It was a light touch application on a simple form, and enjoyed a success rate of around 50% or so.\u00a0 The criterion for funding was academic merit.\u00a0 Nothing else mattered.\u00a0 It funded some brilliant work, and Ken Emond of the British Academy has always spoken very warmly about this scheme, and considered it a real success story.\u00a0 Gradually people started cottoning on to just how good a scheme it was, and success rates started to drop – but that’s what happens when you’re successful.<\/p>\n

Then along came the Comprehensive Spending Review and budgets were cut.\u00a0 I presume the scheme was scrapped under government pressure, only for our heroes at the BA to eventually win the argument.\u00a0 At the same time, the ESRC decided that their reviewers weren’t going get out of bed in the morning for less than \u00a3200k.\u00a0 Suddenly bigger projects were the only option and (funded) academic research looked to be all about perpetual paradigm shifts with only outstanding stuff that will change everything to be funded.\u00a0 And there was no evidence of any thought as to how these major theoretical breakthroughs gained through massive grants might be developed and expanded and exploited and extended through smaller projects.<\/p>\n

Although it was great to see the BA SGS scheme survive in any form, the reduced funding made it inevitable that success rates would plummet.\u00a0 However, the increased funding from the Leverhulme Trust could make a difference.\u00a0 According to the announcement, the Trust has promised \u00a31.5 million funding over three years.\u00a0 Let’s assume:<\/p>\n