Research Funding
Funding Opportunities List
Targeted funding opportunities are announced throughout the year as highlight notices on the home page and on the Funding Opportunities List.
Main funding modes
The AHRC offers several modes of funding for postdoctoral academics; these are listed below.
Research Grants - Standard
Intended to support well-defined research projects; they enable researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, individuals and organisations through high-quality research.
Research Grants - Early Career
Intended to assist new researchers at the start of their careers in gaining experience of managing and leading research projects.
Leadership Fellows Scheme - Standard
Opportunities for researchers and research organisations to work to increase leadership capacity and capabilities through programmes of development, training, and engagement.
Leadership Fellows Scheme - Early Career
Designed to build the capabilities of future leaders and equip individuals who have outstanding potential to develop the range of qualities they need to lead research agendas in the 21st century.
Research Networking Scheme
Intended to support forums for discussion and exchange of ideas on themes, issues, or problems. The scheme aims to facilitate interactions between researchers and stakeholders through, for example, a short series of workshops, seminars, or networking activities.
Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement
Provides funds to support innovative and creative engagements, with new audiences, which stimulate pathways to impact.
About themes, programmes, and highlight notices
Themes
A funding focus for emerging areas of interest. Interdisciplinary and collaborative research often requires specialist support to achieve its potential; themed funding calls support developmental activity, partnership-based activities, and innovation.
Cross-Council programmes
These programmes bring together some or all of the UK Research Councils to support specific areas of funding.
Connected Communities
A cross-Council programme led by the AHRC; designed to help us understand the changing nature of communities in their historical and cultural contexts, and the role of communities in sustaining and enhancing our quality of life.
Open World Research Initiative (OWRI)
A major new funding initiative for modern languages, aiming to support multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary research programmes. The programmes will be expected to develop innovative ways of working and achieve wider impacts by engaging extensively with public audiences, policy bodies, private enterprises, the third sector and international partners.
Highlight notices
Associated with existing research schemes and used to encourage proposals in specific areas of strategic interest to the AHRC, and engage the arts and humanities research community in developing these initiatives.
Highlight notices are applied for a set period of time, such as twelve months, and the descriptions usually guide inquiry rather than prescribe individual research topics.
Data Management Plans
As previously communicated, we have implemented our Data Management Plan which has replaced Technical Plans. From this point we expect all proposals submitted under the Research Grants, Follow on Funding and Leadership Fellows schemes to contain a Data Management Plan and not a Technical Plan.
The system has now been updated and includes a Data Management Plan attachment. Previously we had communicated that there may be a risk that this attachment may not be ready, but this has now been resolved and the attachment has now been implemented. The Research Funding Guide has been updated with all the relevant information.
Please see our Research Funding Guide page for more information on how to complete the Data Management Plan.
Museums and Galleries Research
Museums, galleries, libraries and archives can apply to AHRC in collaboration with a UK university or AHRC-recognised Independent Research Organisation.
About the Research Funding Guide
The Research Funding Guide provides comprehensive information about costs, eligibility, application guidance, assessment criteria and peer review, and award decisions. It also provides information about the terms and conditions for grants and a number of annexes.
Subject coverage
You may also be interested to read about the AHRC's subject coverage.
Panel Outcomes
The Research Councils are all committed to publishing the funding decisions made by their various panels, in order to help applicants and research organisations understand the relative position of their application and the range of all outcomes.
These outcomes can be found in PDF form on the Panel Outcomes page.