Global Innovation Fellowships Programme (United Kingdom)

The objective of the Global Innovation Fellowships is to provide opportunities to UK-based early- and mid-career researchers from across the humanities and social sciences to develop their skills, networks and careers in the creative and cultural, public, private and policy sectors to address challenges that require innovative approaches and solutions. Through the Global Innovation Fellowships, researchers in the SHAPE community will be supported to create new and deeper links beyond academia, so enabling knowledge mobilisation and translation, as well as individual skills development.

The aim is to have a mutually beneficial partnership between the fellowship award holder and DGAP with each able to take advantage of fresh perspectives and expand their networks and reach. It will enable the award holder to strengthen and create new links across policy and academia, enabling knowledge mobilisation and translation, and the opportunity to develop new approaches and solutions to policy challenges through providing a different perspective.

Focus Areas

• Applications are invited in any of the following areas:
  • Technology and International Affairs. Understanding different national approaches to technological developments is important to modern geo-strategy, as is a sense of how technological advances alter international opportunities and risks. A Fellowship in this area could include: how technological advance is affecting foreign, security and trade policy; the governance, ethics, regulation and/or societal engagement related to technological advancement and emerging technologies; the impact of technology on international chains of supply, production and labour; how to build secure and competitive national innovation and industrial ecosystems in a context of global interdependence; how to establish regimes for emerging and disruptive technologies whose potential is not yet clear.
  • Global Order and Disorder. A Fellowship in this area could explore a wide range of challenges and perspectives on global order and disorder, including how the politics of trade, technology, finance, and/or energy can be, and are being, employed to achieve strategic goals for nation states, commercial actors and other stakeholders; how different regional trading orders are emerging and how they relate to global institutions; how to differentiate between revisionism and legitimate strategies to change international order in these fields; and ways for states to cooperate on global goods across value-based divides.
  • Eastern and South-eastern Europe. Eastern and South-eastern Europe are a major focus for EU, German, Russian, Turkish and UK foreign and security policy currently, as well as for the USA, China, and the Gulf States. A Fellowship in this area could include: relations of EU Member States to “third countries” in the region; foreign influence and illicit activity; policy ideas from the region for European technology, energy and finance policy; new forms of infrastructure financing and partnership; impacts for the emerging European security order.
  • Sustainability, Nature & Climate. Ensuring the just transition to a decarbonised society whilst tackling climate change and biodiversity loss is key to ensuring progress towards more inclusive economies and international orders. It is also fraught with problems of solidarity and mistrust. A Fellowship in this area would focus on the climate, sustainability and nature-based challenges of the time and how they affect foreign, security and international development policies; how investments in the green transition can challenge international security, from for example competition for rare earths to large-scale energy generation projects; the scope to build partnerships between the world’s postindustrial and industrial economies in a context of competitive reindustrialisation.

Funding Information

• The award will have a maximum award value of £150,000 on an 80% Full Economic Costing(FEC) basis.
• The Academy is offering up to three one-year fellowships hosted in DGAP’s offices in Berlin.
  Global Innovation Fellowships are expected to commence by September 2025. An earlier start date of March or April 2025 may be possible, in this case the applicant will need to explain how they will plan and manage their relocation on this faster timeline.

Eligibility Criteria

• The British Academy is inviting applications from early-career and mid-career researchers who are working on the themes outlined below who could contribute fresh perspectives to the specified challenges. Please note that applications from independent researchers cannot be accepted in this round of the scheme.
• Applicants might have expertise from a range of disciplinary, conceptual and methodological perspectives, including analytical, policy and practical perspectives.
• Eligible applicants must be ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom with a current longterm appointment that will continue for at least as long as the period of the award. You must be an early-career or mid-career researcher based at an institution in the UK (e.g., a Higher Education Institution [HEI] or Independent Research Organisation [IRO]), from disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences that is listed as an approving-organisation in the British Academy’s grant management system, Flexi-Grant. This institution will be issued the Terms and Conditions of the award, if successful.
• Applicants may not hold more than one British Academy award of a comparable nature at any one time.
• This is an opportunity for award holders to form new collaborations and draw on the insights this brings to inform, influence and develop their future development. They seek open-mindedness, a willingness to explore new perspectives and to experiment with innovative approaches. You will have an appetite for working across academia, policy and practice, and will demonstrate a commitment to being genuinely challenge driven and dedicated to integrating the perspectives, needs and priorities of the partner organisation.
• All applicants should strongly consider the potential for engagement between academic and non-academic environments and the value this would bring to their career and the value they can bring to the work and purpose of the DGAP.

Ineligibility Criteria

• Postgraduate students are not eligible to apply for grant support from the Academy, and Applicants are asked to confirm in the personal details section(s) that they are not currently working towards a PhD, nor awaiting the outcome of a viva voce examination, nor awaiting the acceptance of any corrections required by the examiners.

For more information, visit The British Academy.