SFC Official Development Assistance GCRF 2018-20 internal call
This call is open for applications for projects spanning 1-3 years.
St Andrews SFC ODA GCRF Guidance & Application Form 2018-19
Please send completed application forms to [email protected] by Thursday 8th November 2018.
The University has recently secured funding through the Scottish Funding Council for FY 2018-19 as part of a 3-year strategy for longer-term projects to support cutting-edge research that promotes the economic development and well-being of countries on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list.
The OECD DAC list is available on: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/daclist.htm
The University is committed to supporting projects that are intended to make a real difference to the lives of people in ODA countries, particularly in countries on the Least Developed, Low Income and Lower Middle Income DAC list[1].
The aim is to develop strong and enduring partnerships between the University and developing-country researchers to enhance the research and innovation capacity of both and to deliver substantial impact on improved social welfare, economic development, and environmental sustainability.
The funding will support projects spanning 1-3 years. Projects must have incremental milestones with associated budgets, which must include yearly milestones for projects over 12 months, as funding will be distributed on a yearly basis. This funding will be open to new and existing applicants to SFC GCRF funding from all disciplines; interdisciplinary applications and proposals led by post-doctoral researchers seeking to establish St-Andrews and Scotland-wide collaborations will be particularly welcome. Projects are expected to be in the region of £5-60k for 2018-19, but we anticipate that the majority of awards will be at the lower end of the range.
Applications are welcome from researchers who may not previously have considered the applicability of their work to development issues.
Priority umbrella themes are:
- Energy and innovation
- Global health and inequality
- Sustainability and environmental change
Sustainable livelihoods, promoting justice and humanitarian action, and secure and sustainable food systems are relevant to each theme and, in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) priorities, cross-cutting issues of gender equity and rapid urbanization should also be considered.
Acceptable use of funds includes supporting:
- Capacity and capability building in the UK and developing countries (including strengthening partnership with DAC countries across Scotland).
- Visiting fellowships for colleagues from DAC listed countries (including those from academic, third sector, commercial and policy-focused institutions)
- Challenge-led interdisciplinary and collaborative research activity
- Pump-priming activities to under-pin GCRF bids to other funders, including relationship building
- Generating impact from research both within and beyond the sector
- Rapid response to emergencies where there is an urgent research need
- PhD studentships supporting scholars from countries on the DAC list can be outlined in the longer-term proposals but will not be made available until 2019 at the earliest.
Activities should align with the GCRF Strategy and BEIS ODA Statement of Intent which were published at the end of June 2017:
- UK Strategy for the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
- Research & Innovation: Official Development Assistance (ODA) Statement of Intent
The UK Aid Strategy recognised that research and innovation has a critical role to play in tackling global challenges which most significantly impact upon developing countries. The report identifies the following major drivers of today’s development challenges:
- The youth bulge
- Urbanisation
- Global health security
- Fragility and conflict
- Climate change
Funding will prioritise those areas that have the strongest pathways to impact and where there is the strongest demonstrable expertise to deliver maximum benefits to the global poor. Applications should therefore include anticipated outcomes and project aims and explain how these are directly and primarily relevant to addressing the problems of developing countries.
We encourage applicants, especially those applying for the first time to GRCRF funding, to seek advice from members of the St Andrews Global Challenge Forum by contacting [email protected] in the first instance.
The deadlines for applications is Thursday 8th November 2018 although rapid response applications can be made at a later date provided the spend date of 30th June 2019 can be met. Please email applications to [email protected].
All spend on the grant must be completed by 30th June 2019.
The fund is not intended to support the following costs:
- Buy-out of time or salary costs for permanent academic staff
- Estates and indirect costs or other overheads
- Short falls from FEC funded research
- PhD student fees
- Publisher costs associated with Open Access