The Vision for Funded Projects
The Centre for Equality Research in Brain Sciences is offering funding for small projects on equality issues in the academic community. Exciting new insights are expected.
The Centre for Equality Research in Brain Sciences is launching a second round of researching funding to provide support for small research projects that aim to understand pertinent equality issues within the Faculty and across academia. This fund has previously funded five successful research projects across the Faculty.
Our vision is for the Faculty of Brain Sciences to become an internationally recognised hub for research excellence on EDI, with an impactful network of researchers working in interdisciplinary ways to promote understanding and solutions regarding EDI challenges. The fund will support original work using data (new or existing; quantitative or qualitative) to inform hypotheses or wider considerations in the field of EDI work, with the intention to publish. We also particularly encourage you to submit projects that foster collaboration between Institutes and Divisions across the Faculty, and include Early Career Researchers in the core team.
The projects should address equality, diversity and inclusion related to disability and neurodivergence, LGBTQ+, gender, race and ethnicity, or religion and belief. inclusion related to disability and neurodivergence, LGBTQ+, gender, race and ethnicity, or religion and belief.
Available Funds
The overall amount of money available in this first round of grants is £18,000 in total.
Applicants can request up to £5,000, but the average funded project is expected to be at about £2000. We are hoping to fund 3 to 5 projects.
Categories and examples of eligible projects for the current call are:
Scope: This category will involve understanding our community and practice better by researching our Faculty staff and students, including existing EDI datasets or interventions, to better inform our local challenges and/or our progress and targets in EDI.
Example: funding for a Research Assistant to conduct focus groups to investigate the effects of intersectionality of protected characteristics within the Faculty of Brain Sciences, or any related intervention, with the intention to publish the related findings in peer-reviewed outlets.
Scope: This category will involve broader academic research such as sampling, inclusion or publication bias in academic research or educational projects and activities related to any disciplinary area represented in the Faculty of Brain Sciences.
Example: conducting research into how people are treated differently in Neuroscience or Mental Health Higher Education programmes because of a protected characteristic, with the intention to publish.
Examples of projects that are not eligible
• Data collection, or interventions without a clear research aim and potential.
• Projects just seeking OA publication fees, or travel/conference/seminar/workshop expenses.
• Research projects without a primary EDI aim.
• Research projects without a primary focus in disciplines represented in the Faculty of Brain Sciences (although collaborations with staff from other departments and Faculties are encouraged when they provide valuable expertise, e.g. EDI in neuroAI; computational modelling of EDI interventions; application of qualitative methods research, field methods etc).