Talent Development Awards Scheme Grant

Talent Development Awards Scheme Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: The British Academy
Amount: Up to £10,000
Last Updated: September 01, 2025

Summary

The Talent Development Awards Scheme, funded by The British Academy, offers grants of up to £10,000 for UK-based researchers to enhance skills in quantitative methods, data science, and digital humanities. Aimed at established scholars with long-term contracts, the scheme fosters innovative research methods through training, collaboration, and dissemination. It contributes to high-quality research and promotes interdisciplinary knowledge exchange, ultimately investing in the future of UK talent in the humanities and social sciences.

Overview

About Us The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. We mobilize these disciplines to understand the world and shape a brighter future. ​ The British Academy is an independent fellowship of world-leading scholars and researchersa funding body that supports new research, nationally and internationallya forum for debate and engagement – a voice that champions the humanities and social sciences. Talent Development Awards Scheme The Talent Development Awards are available to promote the acquisition and advancement of skills in relevant areas by UK-based researchers, promoting innovative research methods, be that through skills development, collaboration or dissemination. These awards, up to £10,000 in value and tenable for a fixed period of 12 months, are provided to promote the building of skills and capacities for current and future generations, including in core areas like quantitative skills, interdisciplinarity, data science, digital humanities and languages. The British Academy has been funded by the UK government, Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to support a pilot of a new scheme of Talent Development Awards. The aim of the Talent Development Awards is to promote the building of skills and capacities for current and future generations, including in core areas like quantitative skills, interdisciplinarity, data science, digital humanities and languages. This scheme aims to promote the acquisition and advancement of skills in relevant areas by UK-based researchers, promoting innovative research methods, be that through skills development, collaboration or dissemination. The overarching aims of the scheme are to invest in UK talent and skills and as a result to contribute to the development and delivery of high quality regional, national and international research by: raising the quality of advanced quantitative and / or data science skills used in research;creating new opportunities for knowledge and skills to exchange across disciplines and sectors; andpromoting language learning and the transferable skills that language learning provides. The scheme is intended for established researchers in the humanities and social sciences with a permanent or long-term contract at a UK-based HEI or IRO who wish to experiment with new quantitative methods through a variety of means, or to experiment with methods and vehicles for teaching languages in Higher Education. The awards will in particular be valuable to researchers wishing to pilot new methods and approaches in order to apply for larger grants in the longer term or develop new international partnerships. Intended applicants are encouraged to be creative in their thinking about how these awards can best help advance their research ideas, including through collaborative, partnership working.

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Eligible applicants for this scheme must be ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom with a current long-term appointment that will continue for at least as long as the period of the award at a UK institution (HEI or IRO).Affiliation to a UK academic institution is a requirement for Talent Development Awards. Applicants for the Talent Development Awards should be intending to pursue original, independent research in any field of study within the humanities or social sciences. There are no quotas for individual subject areas and no thematic priorities.We do accept applications from those who have equivalent experience, for example, an individual in an established post, and/or who has teaching experience, and/or who has a track record of publications in their relevant field is eligible to apply. The only restriction to this would be if you are currently registered as a PhD student whilst in your academic post, as PhD students are not eligible to apply.If your employment contract lasts the duration of your research project, or is likely to be extended, then you may apply via your institution if you wish to do so.The maximum grant is £10,000. Awards are to enable engagement activities to take place and are not intended as time buy-out for the award-holder. This scheme is not offered on a Full Economic Costing (FEC) basis, and all of the grants awarded are expected to be used 100% for the purposes specified in the application.It is expected that approximately 20 awards (dependent upon the amount of funding required for each of the successful awards) will be made. The following list gives examples of potential kinds of activities, but is not exhaustive: Funding for training in advanced quantitative skills with a view to applying them in research or teaching those skills to others.Funding to allow visiting specialists to deliver bespoke training in advanced quantitative methods, data science or skills relating to language learning.Support for conferences, workshops and other activities that promote collaboration or cross-disciplinary learning in the use of advanced quantitative methods or data science.Support for the development of innovative teaching courses aimed at research students and researchers; and/or online resources and hubs in advanced quantitative skills, data science, and in languages.Support for developing individual expertise and teaching the skills associated with the use of languages in research – for example in working with interpreters and translators.Funding for piloting the novel use of advanced quantitative methods or data science in research projects.Funding can be used for a variety of purposes in support of the above activities such as: employing teaching and research assistants;covering the costs involved in hosting workshops or conferences;meeting the costs of developing digital teaching tools and courses;meeting travel and accommodation costs of visiting teachers and speakers;costs associated with online dissemination of information, including the development of podcasts, audio and/or visual recording of events, costs associated with the analysis of feedback from participants and preparation of suitable reports on activities.All applications must have one lead applicant, although applications on behalf of more than one person are welcome. The lead applicant is responsible for notifying any other parties. Other parties can include:Up to a maximum of two co-applicants are permissible. The co-applicant(s) will be directly involved in the delivery of the activity that is proposed by the lead applicant.Co-applicant can be based overseas, provided there is a UK based Principal Investigator.There will be a section to name other participants in a project whose involvement does not equate to being a co-applicant. Other participants will be beneficiaries of the activity proposed by the lead applicant and will not be directly involved with the organization of activity.

Ineligibility

NB Postgraduate students are not eligible to apply for grant support from the Academy, and applicants (and co-applicants) are asked to confirm in the personal details section(s) that they are not currently working towards a PhD, nor awaiting the outcome of a viva voce examination, nor awaiting the acceptance of any corrections required by the examiners.Duplicate applications for the same purpose to more than one Academy scheme will not be accepted.Talent Development Award funds cannot be used to pay for the salary or the time of the PI.