Talent Development Awards (United Kingdom)

The aim of the scheme is to promote the building of skills and capacities for current and future generations, including in core areas like quantitative skills, interdisciplinarity, data science, digital humanities and languages. This scheme promotes the acquisition and advancement of skills in relevant areas by UK-based researchers, supporting innovative research methods, be that through skills development, collaboration or dissemination. The overarching aims of the scheme are to invest in UK talent and skills, and as a result, to contribute to the development and delivery of high quality regional, national and international research by:

• raising the quality of advanced quantitative skills and/or data science skills used in research, including digital methods;
• creating new opportunities for knowledge and skills to exchange across disciplines and sectors; and
• promoting language learning and the transferable skills that language learning provides.

The scheme is intended for established researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences with a current long-term appointment at a UK-based Higher Education Institution (HEI) or Independent Research Organisation (IRO) who wish to experiment with new methods that speak to the aims of the scheme, as above. Equally, it is intended for researchers who wish to explore new opportunities for skills development and knowledge translation. The awards will, in particular, be valuable to researchers wishing to pilot new methods and approaches in order to apply for larger grants in the longer term or develop new partnerships, be it locally, nationally or internationally. Applicants are encouraged to be creative in their thinking about how these awards can best help advance their research ideas, including through collaborative, partnership working. This scheme is designed to benefit the career, skills and talent of award-holders, and by extension, groups within or beyond academia who will also benefit from the sharing of skills and methods.

Funding Information

• The maximum grant is £10,000. Awards are to enable engagement activities to take place and are not intended as time buy-out for the award-holder.
• This scheme is not offered on a Full Economic Costing (FEC) basis, and all of the grants awarded are expected to be used 100% for the purposes specified in the application.
• The awards are for a minimum period of 6 months and up to a maximum period of 12 months, starting from no earlier than 1 March 2025 and no later than 31 March 2025.

Eligible Activities

• The British Academy welcomes applications requesting support for a wide range of activities that demonstrate innovation either in the use, acquisition and teaching of: languages, digital humanities, interdisciplinarity, data science skills, and quantitative skills. The following list gives examples of potential kinds of activities, but is not exhaustive:
  • Funding for the Lead Applicant and Co-applicant(s) to acquire new skills or training from specialists, such as, in advanced quantitative methods, data science or skills relating to language learning, with a view to applying them in research or teaching those skills to others.
  • Funding to allow visiting specialists to deliver bespoke teaching in advanced quantitative methods, data science or skills relating to language learning.
    Support for conferences, workshops and other activities that promote collaboration or cross-disciplinary learning in the use of advanced quantitative methods, data science or digital humanities.
  • Support for the development of innovative teaching courses and/or online resources and hubs in advanced quantitative skills, data science, and in languages.
  • Support for developing individual expertise and teaching the skills associated with the use of languages in research – for example in working with interpreters and translators.
  • Funding for piloting the novel use of advanced quantitative methods or data science in research projects.

Eligibility Criteria

• Eligible Lead Applicants must be ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom with a current long-term appointment that will continue for at least as long as the period of the award at a UK-based institution (HEI or IRO). Applicants for the Talent Development Awards should be intending to pursue original, independent research in any field of study within the Humanities or Social Sciences. There are no quotas for individual subject areas and no thematic priorities.
• Lead Applicants who do not have a doctorate may have equivalent experience, which they should define in the personal statement section. Co-applicants may be based in the UK or overseas. They may have a doctorate or equivalent experience, or other specialist knowledge as appropriate to the aims of the scheme.

For more information, visit The British Academy.