Government funding
Around £3 billion of public money is allocated to academic research each year. This money is controlled by the UK’s seven Research Councils. These are many academics’ first port of call when preparing an application for grant funding.
Research Councils UK (RCUK) is the umbrella body which oversees the Research Councils. Its website provides an overview of the Councils and the research areas funded by each one.
Other government departments and agencies may offer research funding for projects connected to the remit of the department. Examples include the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for International Development .
Learned societies
The Royal Society offers a series of grants and fellowships which are specifically designed to support early career researchers.
Professional societies are also excellent places to look for travel grants. A good example is the scheme run by the Royal Society of Chemistry. They may also offer funding for Public Engagement activities. If you belong to a professional society it is worth checking their website thoroughly for any funding opportunities that might be open to you.
Charities and trusts
A great deal of academic research is now funded by the charitable sector. There are a large number of charities who are potential sources of funding, and it will take some in-depth research to find one that is right for your discipline and area of interest.
Large medical charities often provide both large programme grants to sustain research groups in established centres, and individual project grants and fellowships to support new research. Cancer Research UK, for example, currently has 28 separate funding schemes which include ‘Career Establishment’ and ‘Career Development’ awards, and a range of travel grants.
Other good places to look are the large charitable trusts, for example:
- The Wellcome Trust offers research grants and fellowships in biomedical sciences and the humanities. It also offers grants for knowledge transfer and public engagement activities.
- The Leverhulme Trust offers grants and fellowships across the whole spectrum of disciplines. These include travel grants. Its preference is to give funding to areas which are not well funded by the government or the charitable sector.
- The Joseph Rowntree Foundation does not offer grants as such, but issues periodic calls for research proposals in areas of interest to the Foundation which encompasses root causes of social problems and ways of overcoming them.
Grants are normally made only on research proposals which support the ethos and charitable aims of the trust, so you might have to satisfy strict criteria in order to be eligible.
Your university
Although universities are unlikely to have large grants available, many universities have smaller funding sources which can be used to support research in a wide variety of ways. These may include:
- Travel grants
- 'Pump-priming' awards for new projects
- Knowledge transfer and public engagement grants
- 'Bridging' funds. These are short-term grants which are used to keep a researcher in employment if there is a gap between other funding sources, for instance when one period of grant funding has expired but a new grant has yet to start. Awards are typically of 3-6 months duration.
Industry
Knowledge transfer from universities to industry is now a priority for government and funding bodies. Many private-sector companies run Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) which are designed to bring academic knowledge to bear on industrial challenges, and these can be lucrative sources of funding. RCUK’s Knowledge Transfer Portal has information on a host of funding opportunities for collaborative work between universities and industry, the charitable sector and government.
KTPs typically provide the salary for a researcher to work on the project. The funded positions are usually at pre-doctoral level, so if you are a post-doctoral researcher looking to extend your own contract these may not be suitable. However, they can be an excellent opportunity for you to gain experience of overseeing a project and providing supervision.
Information on funding for knowledge transfer activities may be useful to you.
Other sources
There are many other funding bodies, often with a remit to support highly specialised work. Accessing information about these funding bodies can be as challenging as preparing a grant application; luckily there are a number of resources which can help you.