Research funders across the UK and Europe are increasingly looking for evidence of engagement plans within research proposals. Whether a large scale collaboration or an individual fellowship application, we can provide help and support to maximise the competitiveness of your proposal through embedding engagement and impact plans.
There are two main ways in which the public engagement team can assist researchers with their proposals:-
- Ensuring that the existing campus-wide infrastructure around public engagement is highlighted and exploited in case for support and/or pathways to impact sections of grants. This can be through our year-round opportunties to engage, skills and career development courses or strategic partnerships in public engagement including with the NCCPE on our Engage Watermark, with VITAE on researcher development or with the major funders on concordats such as Openess of Animals in Research or Career Development of Researchers.
- Bespoke engagement plans with identified stakeholder groups or beneficiaries of the research – which will be very different from one grant or fellowship application to another. This typically involves a brainstorm over what (non-academic) communities it would be useful for researchers to work with, in order to shape and progress the research and a consideration of who the research outputs could affect.
Guidance is also available from the major funders on embedding engagement with grants. For staff supported by the core science grant from the Wellcome Trust, it is still possible to pursue public engagement projects supported by Wellcome outside the infrastructure created by the Public Engagement team. Staff interested in this must first speak with the Public Engagement team. You can email us at engage@wellcomeconnectingscience.org.