ESRC-IRC UK-Ireland Networking Grants


Posted: 14 January, 2020

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC) are launching a networking grants opportunity aimed at fostering the development of long-term relationships between social science researchers in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Scope and Focus
Current political and economic uncertainties are prominent issues affecting the future relationship of the UK and Ireland. As such, the social sciences have been identified as an important area for collaboration between the ESRC and the IRC, and applications are welcomed from the breadth of the social science community.

The intention is that the networking activities supported through these grants will enable new relationships between UK and Irish researchers to be formed; for existing relationships to be strengthened; and for the overall level of connection between the UK and Irish social science communities to be enhanced. As such, there are no thematic restrictions within this call.

In the spirit of genuine collaboration, project leadership will be shared between Co-Principal Investigators. Co-Principal Investigators must comprise of one academic based in the UK and one academic based in Ireland. Co-PIs will share intellectual ownership of the project and be responsible for management of networking activities for their national team.

Budget and Grant sizes
Funding of up to £20,000 (at 100% non‑standard FEC) will be available per networking grant application. Of this, up to £10,000 will be funded by the ESRC to cover the UK component of the project and up to £10,000 (euro equivalent) will be funded by the IRC for the Irish component. Up to 10 awards are expected to be funded; they will generally commence by late summer 2020 and will run for 12 months.

Process and Timetable
Full details of the commissioning process will be provided in the call specification. An outline timeline is presented below:

  • Call launch – February 2020
  • Deadline for submission of proposals – late April 2020
  • Final funding decisions – July 2020
  • Projects commence from – August 2020

Further Information
Further information will be provided in the call specification, which will be available when the call is launched next month.

Data Protection Notice

Please read our updated Data Protection Notice.

Our use of cookies

We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We'd also like to set optional analytics cookies to help us improve it. We won't set these optional cookies unless you enable them. Using this tool will set a cookie on your device to remember your preferences.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Privacy Policy page

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Analytics cookies

We'd like to set Google Analytics cookies to help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone.