Author Archives: ejd2

LEP Challenge Sessions

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You may have seen a previous blog about the Stoke on Trent & Staffordshire LEP area being given an indicative allocation of €161.6m for the next EU funding phase 2014 – 2020.  This allocation is to cover ERDF (European Regional Development Fund), ESF (European Social Fund) and EAFRD (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development) priorities. Over the next few weeks the LEP is running a series of stakeholder challenge sessions to explore and define key elements to be included in their preparing a European Structural and Investment Fund Strategy, which will plan for how the €161.6m will be spent here in Staffordshire.

The following sessions have been arranged to date:

  • Business Development – Wednesday 7th August, 3:30 pm Staffordshire University
  • Sectors & Innovation – Friday 9th August, 9:30 am Keele Sustainability Hub
  • Inward Investment – Friday 16th August, 2:00 pm Staffordshire place 1
  • Skills – Monday 9th September, 9:30 am Rodbaston College
  • Quality of Life / Sites & Infrastructure – Wednesday 11th September, 2:00 pm CoRE

We are keen to get appropriate unviersity representation at these events, please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk if you would like to attend.

How can big data be used in Arts and Humanities?

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BIG-DATA

We are seeing a range of funding bodies offer opportunities for researchers to work with Big Data, with two current calls seeking to address how this can most effectively be used within Arts and Humanities. Big data is information resources which are so large that they exceed the capacity of commonly used software and analysis tools, so new approaches and methodologies have to be developed to analyse them.  Big data is a challenge across all research disciplines, from the Large Hadron Collider to British Library archives and poses new legal and ethical challenges in its use.

The AHRC has a £4 million pot to explore Big Data as part of their Digital Transformations on the Arts and Humanities theme, with a closing date of 12th September.  There are two different scales of projects that will be supported, those up to £100K and those up to £600k.  For funding of up to £100k, pilot projects looking at innovative uses of existing datasets are sought; with early career researchers in particular being encouraged.  For the larger projects more in depth approaches are sought.  Collaborations and interdisciplinary investigations are encouraged across both strands, with British Library and National Archives offering to consider access to materials.

Nesta also has a specific Big Data strand under its Collaborative R&D Fund for the Arts.  This funding stream will support partnership applications involving a consortium of 3 arts organisations, a technology partner and a research partner. Friday 13th September is the deadline for expressions of interest, for projects up to £300k.

Please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk if you are interested. Further information: AHRC http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Pages/Big-Data-Projects-Call.aspx and  Digital R&D funding for the Arts http://www.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/content/call-big-data

Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowships to work with Industry

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The Royal Academy of Engineering Fellowships have announced their Industrial Secondment Scheme for this year, with a deadline of September 30th.  Projects must involve a secondment to an industrial host and focus on exchange of current industry working practices to inform teaching and curriculum development.  It is aimed that the projects will be tha start of a longer term cooperation.  The scheme supports salary costs for the period of the secondment and is open to all disciplines.

Further Information: http://www.raeng.org.uk/research/univ/secondment/default.htm

engineering

Funding for new teaching and learning developments in marketing

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The Academy of Marketing has grants of up to £2000 to support research into teaching and learning related to marketing.  They are looking to fund projects involving pedagogic research into innovative and effective learning, teaching and assessment methods. There is a deadline of 19th August which is a tight turnaround but the application form is short in line with the small value of funding.  Please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk if you are interested in this call.

Further details: http://www.academyofmarketing.org/education/teaching-research-and-development-grants.html 

pedagogy

Funding for innovative PhD and early career researcher training

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AHRCs Collaborative Skills Development Call is aimed at supporting the development of innovative, collaborative training packages for PhD students and early career researchers in the arts and humanities through a range of interventions:

  • Funding of up to £60,000 to offer training and skills development activities to groups of students and Early Career Researchers in several institutions.
  • Funds up to £5,000 to support ECRs to establish and run collaborative training and researcher development activities . 
  • Support for doctoral students to establish and run smaller-scale collaborative activities, with an award limit of £3,000. 

Innovative interventions such as internships, competitions, entrepreneurs-in-residence, etc are encouraged.  Applications will be eligible from any discipline within AHRC’s remit but should focus on:

  • Partnership working including public engagement
  • Entrepreneurship and the Creative Economy
  • Research Skills Enrichment

The closing date is 19th September 2013, please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk if you are interested.  Further information: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Pages/Collaborative-Skills-Development-Call.aspx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Association+of+Research+Managers+%26+Administrators&utm_campaign=2890457_July+2013&utm_content=AHRCcall&dm_i=14OU,1PYAH,71UHKB,64BKR,1

 

Looking to collaborate with partners in Australia?

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CAESIE

CAESIE is a new consortium established to promote partnerships between European and Australian Researchers and SMEs

CAESIE (Connecting Australian European Science and Innovation Excellence) is a bilateral partnership supported by the European Union and the Australian government.  It provides a range of support to foster bilateral SME research links including partner brokerage, funding to develop new collaborations and support to access mainstream international collaborative research funding.  We can therefore get assistance to develop links with SMEs in Australia through this scheme. CAESIE prioritises the following three areas:

  • clean energy
  • healthy ageing
  • sustainable cities

Further details: http://caesie.org/

How can we promote ourselves internationally?

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 Symbolique 2006

The European Commission has published a Communication on ‘European higher education in the world’. This communication provides recommendations on how higher education institutions can work strategically to promote themselves outside Europe. This will document will also be a useful strategic reference point for future applications to the Erasmus+ funding stream, which will offer over €400 million per year for collaborations in education, training, youth and sport.

Further details at http://ec.europa.eu/education/higher-education/doc/com499_en.pdf

Teaching Development Grant funding announced

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The Higher Education Academy has an open call for Teaching Development Grants.  This funding is designed to support cooperation between colleagues to enhance teaching and learning activities. Up to £30,000 can be requested, match funding from us would also be expected.

Applications should relate to one on the main HEA themes: assessment and feedback, education for sustainability, employability, flexible learning, internationalisation, online learning, retention and success, reward and recognition, and students as partners.

The deadline for applications is noon on Friday 2 August. Further details: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/tdg/departmental. We expect this call to be of interest to a number of colleagues, therefore please inform us if you are considering to prevent internal competition.

 

News of funding for Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire LEP

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This week has been an important week for preparation for the next generation of EU funding programmes for External Projects Team and also bought news of our local EU funding allocation. Our LEP has been given a notional allocation of €161.6m (£137m) of Structural Investment Funds 2014-2020, which equates to the 14th highest allocation out of the 39 LEP’s.

IMG00019-20130626-1500SIFIS socio economic framework meeting 250613

The Structural Investment Funds, formerly known as the Common Strategic Framework (CSF), bring together ERDF (European Regional Development Fund), ESF (European Social Fund) the Cohesion Fund, EAFRD (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development) and the EMFF (European Maritime and Fisheries Fund). Emma Davies presented at the first Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire LEP EU Investment Strategy Working Group meeting on Monday. This group will be leading the preparation of the LEP’s Structural Investment Fund and Investment Strategy (SIFIS). It was agreed that a series of challenge groups over the summer will be run to allow stakeholders to input into prioritisation for the draft strategy required for Autumn.  Further information will be circulated on how university colleagues can input into this process.  Tuesday followed up with a review of the West Midlands Socio-Economic Framework, prepared by West Midlands European Service.  This will form part of the evidence base for our local SIFIS. 

Wednesday was the Universities UK conference Europe: at the heart of internationalisation. This conference was focussed on the opportunities and policy drivers the EU presented for internationalisation of UK HEIs, considering the Bologna Process and funding opportunities for research and teaching.  It was announced at this event that the Erasmus for All programme will be changing its name to Erasmus Plus!

For further information please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk.  Details of the Structural Investment Funds and the West Midlands Socio Economic Framework can be found at http://www.wmemployers.org.uk/wmescsf.  Presentations from the UUK conference can be found at http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/events/Pages/EuropePresentations.aspx.

Reduced rate for EU funding training

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The External Projects Team have been offered two places for a Moderngov training session on accessing European funding.  The session will be held in London on 9th July. Full details of the programme are available by clicking this link http://www.moderngov.com/courses/sector-specific/accessing-european-funding-09-07-2013/. The reduced rate is £395 + VAT  per delegate – please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk by 4pm Friday 28th June for details on how to secure this reduced rate. The External Projects Team will be running internal events on EU funding in the Autumn so if this course is of interest to you but you are unable to attend, please keep an eye out for further updates.