Eight exciting new ECR projects from the CREDS Flexible Fund

24 June, 2020

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Projects from the 2019 Call were selected at a decision-making panel in March 2020. We’re delighted to announce the successful projects!

CREDS is pleased to announce eight successful projects from its recent Early Career Researcher (ECR) Flexible Fund Call.

The call ran from July to December 2019 and projects were selected at a decision-making panel in March 2020. Contracts have now been agreed with all the institutions involved. This is the largest single use of the Flexible Fund, with £1M (at 80% FEC) allocated to researchers who had not yet led a project of over £100,000.

The eight projects are:

Most of the eight projects will start within the next few months and will be integrated into our existing thematic areas of work.

As the call was for Early Career Researchers, we put additional support mechanisms in place during the call itself, with a comprehensive programme of feedback to follow. We also carried out a thorough evaluation of the ECR Flexible Fund call, the effectiveness of the process and various aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) involved in the call.

Evaluation

The evaluation concludes that the call was well-run and well received. The support offered was, for the most part, enthusiastically taken up and well regarded. The use of a new qualification criteria for ECRs and permitting people on non-permanent contracts to apply were both important in allowing applicants who are not normally eligible. It is also clear that more funding for ECRs would help retain people in academia, increase the diversity of our research community and represents a small risk from a public investment point of view.

We would like to congratulate the ECRs joining CREDS and look forward to benefiting from their exciting contributions. We would also like to thank all those involved in the funding call, including applicants, reviewers, the panel, the CREDS core team and those who were involved in the evaluation.

Banner photo credit: Faris Mohammed on Unsplash