Early Career Researcher Development Fund Guidance

What we are looking for

Proposals must:

• Be led by an ECR¹, employed by a UK research organisation ² and whose employment contract extends at least to the end of the proposed grant period.
• Include co-production with at least one non-academic partner organisation, and have a strong collaborative approach, with clear partner support
• Present original and innovative ideas.
• Address the theme of vulnerability and policing and complement rather than duplicate the wider research programme of work across the Centre
• Advance the Centre’s values and principles.
• Be feasible and rigorous in terms of methodology and sound logic.
• Explicitly address equality, diversity, and inclusion issues.
• Have the potential to secure longer-term ‘follow-on’ funding and/or scalability across other partners.
• Have high potential impact and identify the pathways to impact, including by explicitly considering the translation and application of the research findings for policy and/or practice and how these might best be secured.
• Contribute to capacity building, e.g. through career development of the ECR Principal Investigator.

Preference will be given to proposals that:

• Enable co-production with service providers and/or service users and vulnerable groups.
• Comprise approaches that are multi-disciplinary.

Thematic and methodological steers for the 2025-26 call

For the Fund’s fourth year (for projects commencing in 2026), we welcome applications in all fields relating to vulnerability and policing for this Open Call.

We will reserve one award to be focused on:

• Vulnerability in drugs markets (Dr Leah Moyle Commemorative Award).

This award is named in memory of our Round 1 grantholder, Dr Leah Moyle, who sadly passed away in May 2024.

We are keen to solicit applications that deploy quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches and/or make effective use of secondary data.

All applications will be equally assessed against the criteria regardless of thematic focus and the strength of the proposals will be the first and foremost priority when allocating funding.

Addressing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

In line with Centre Values and Principles, it is important that applications pay careful attention in terms of project design, to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Applicants are encouraged to refer to the resources linked below to enhance their understanding of expectations in terms of building EDI into projects.

Addressing EDI issues such as race, gender, disability and neurodiversity is an essential assessment criteria and applications in previous rounds have often been weakened by a lack of focus on these issues.

• Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, University of Leeds
• The Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Research Centre, University of York

Eligibility

• Funds can only be awarded to a recognised research organisation (RO), not a person.
• Guidance on organisations eligible to apply for funding can be found on the ESRC website. This includes a list of independent research organisations (IROs) and other organisations eligible to apply.
• Principal Investigator (PI):
  • Only one person on the application can be named as Principal Investigator (PI).
  • The PI must be an ECR³ employed by their UK research organisation, with a contract of employment that does not end before the proposed project ends.
  • Applicants must be able to confirm the support of their institution to enable them to fulfil the commitments of the project.
  • A PI can only submit one application to the Fund but can be Co-I on other applications.

• Organisations outside the UK are not eligible to apply to lead an application. They are however, eligible to be included as project partners or Co-investigators (who would be expected to make a contribution, either financially or in-kind) or Consultants; please note, overseas consultants cannot be named as Co-investigators. Please see the ‘Funding’ section regarding costings for international external partners.
• We would normally expect applications to include collaborations with external organisations, such as public service and/or third sector organisations. Time of practitioners, NGO staff or service users can be costed, where explicitly justified. Non-academic applicants can also co-lead projects. Third sector, government/public sector organisations and businesses can be included for up to 30% of the budget (at full economic costing), but a justification will be needed. It is not expected that large businesses would be able to justify this, but charities/NGOs/social enterprises could.
• ECR Development Grant awards will be transferred from the University of York to eligible ROs.
• We are not able to fund PhD studentships or Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs).
• Awards funded through the ESRC Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre ECR Development Fund should follow UKRI’s standard terms and conditions of funding and align to the ESRC’s research funding guide. Please note, however, that all correspondence should come to the Centre.
• Those directly involved in the Centre are not eligible to be PI of any Fund application but they can be included as a part of an applicant’s Project Team. This also applies to Centre advisory board members (including National Engagement Group, International Advisory Board and Ethical Oversight Panel).
• Given the stated aim of the Fund to support ECR development and capacity building, applicants should consider the balance of responsibility for the proposed project between the PI (ECR) and any more experienced Co-Is. The primary role of experienced Co-Is in the context of these grants should be to provide guidance and mentorship to the PI.

¹ In line with the definition previously used by UKRI, and which we have used for the previous three calls for applications to this Fund, we are defining an ECR as an individual who “has a PhD (or equivalent professional training) and is within eight years* of their PhD viva”.

*Durations exclude any period of career break, e.g. for family care or health reasons.

² See link to ESRC guidance on eligible research organisations under the Eligibility section.

³ As previously defined.