AHRC Catalyst Award Scheme

Notify Faculty of intention to apply by: 2 December 2024

Deadline: 30 January 2025

Apply for funding to support a significant research project to accelerate your trajectory as an independent researcher, unlock potential and build leadership and convenor experience. 

Proposed research must accord with the AHRC's research remit and priorities.

Eligibility

Eligibility is determined on the basis of funding history at point of submitting your application. The project lead cannot be a current or former project lead on AHRC or other UKRI research grants or fellowship grants at point of application, with the following exceptions:

• doctoral training awards (any)
• early career fellowships (any)
• AHRC Research Networking (or equivalent)
• AHRC Curiosity Awards
• AHRC Small Grants in the creative and performing arts
• AHRC Research Grants Practice Led and Applied
• institutional lead on a UKRI Impact Accelerator Award (IAA)
• researcher lead/recipient of an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award (IAA)

Duration and Value

The maximum duration of this award is five years and the Full Economic Cost of your project can be between £100,000 and £300,000 (the AHRC will fund 80% of the FEC). The project start date must be at least nine months from the point of the application submission to AHRC.

How to Apply

Applications must be submitted via the UKRI Funding Service system. The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the UKRI Funding Service, but the UKRI expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application.

Internal Restrictions

We will support applications from academics who are already employed by Oxford on a permanent contract. Applicants who do not have a permanent post would require the grant to cover their salary. In this case, it will be difficult to justify requesting the salary of a full-time principal investigator as the dominant component of the grant, as this would preclude the employment of a project team, as required by the AHRC for a successful application.

We will support applicants who wish to request the salary of a part-time principal investigator of 0.4FTE (two days a week) or less. Before applying, we ask applicants to find an Oxford academic on a permanent contract to act as their mentor for the duration of the project.

AHRC Curiosity Award Scheme

The AHRC Curiosity Award Scheme has the same deadlines as the Catalyst scheme, and can also be held for up to five years, but is for smaller projects, e.g. seed funding, scoping, network building, and the Full Economic Cost of a project is limited to a maximum of £100,000. PIs looking to request part-time FTE salary should consider applying for the Catalyst or Standard grant award schemes instead. For this scheme, we will only support applications from academics who are already employed by Oxford on a permanent contract or whose fixed term contract extends beyond the planned project end date.

Deadlines