Building Communities

Professor Janice KayProvost

University of Exeter

• The fundamental principle of GW4 funding is to enable strategic research partnerships that could not have been created by any of the single institutions on their own and that have the potential to create significant added value

• Of a scale and capability required to address major research and societal challenges

• Supporting these communities to leverage significant external research funding

Building Research Communities

Two types of BC Scheme

• Initiator - New community building activities (up to £20k, 3 months)

• Accelerator - Established community collaborative pump priming activities which lead to a step change in external funding and/or measures of academic esteem (£20k-£75k, 6 months).

Process

• Bottom up academically-driven process for distributing research funds to initiate and grow research activity

• Structured and openly competitive. Two rounds completed, with a further round in progress (closed 6th March)

• A panel of experts from each GW4 University has evaluated all proposals under set criteria

Progress to date• GW4 has invested over £650k in 35 projects.

• Two Initiator Funding calls generated 81 applications, 30 of which were funded. One Accelerator Funding call generated 12 applications, 5 of which were funded.

• Nearly 100 bids submitted, 35 communities funded

• Reflect breadth of academic disciplines across GW4 and all ‘grand challenge’ areas especially health, climate action, inclusive innovative & reflective societies & advanced materials

• More than 150 academics driving projects, plus hundreds more involved, numerous representatives from business, industry and funding bodies

Progress on Leverage• Identification and submission to other potential funding sources including:

EPSRC, NERC, RCUK, Dstl, H2020, and the Catapult Environmental Program.

• Equipment sharing between Universities as well as donations of equipment to GW4 communities from external partners

• Specific Example:• GW4-IF-016 Community - Collective Human-Information Interaction • Led by: Alun Preece (Cardiff) with Peter Johnson (Bath), Alex Bentley

(Bristol), Roger Maull (Exeter) Value: £15,000 (IFR1)• EPSRC outline proposal "Joining the dots: connecting agile

hypothesis formation to rapidly collected data from humans and machines”

• Value: c £1.4m

EDIEVAL STUDIES

Jamie DohertyResearch Assistant, GW4 Medieval Studiesj.doherty@bristol.ac.uk

GW4 MEDIEVAL STUDIES

• Universities of Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter

• 65 Medievalists and 75 Research Students

• Aims:3 Significant Funding Grants

3 THEMES

• Wales and the South West of England(Chair: Helen Fulton, University of Bristol)

• Sex and Gender(Chair: Bronach Kane, Cardiff University)

• Authority and Ethics(Chair: Sarah Hamilton, University of Exeter)

ACTIVITIES• Research Seminars

(1 per Institution and a Virtual Seminar)

• Conferences(3 x ½-Day Events; 1 Full-Day Event;

Leeds IMC)

• Bid Writing Sessions