The Route to the Award
ERC’s Public Engagement with Research Award is designed to recognise and celebrate ERC grantees who have demonstrated excellence in public engagement and outreach across the natural and social sciences. This prestigious award provides the winners with high visibility in the form of public interest and increased media coverage.
After its inclusion on the REF Impact Case Study longlist in 2018, Professor Shah’s case study of the causes of social oppression in India was identified as having high potential for four-star impact owing to its engagement with high-level policy actors (UK Parliament and the ILO) and novel programme of international public engagement through an international visual exhibition and prize-winning general readership scholarly high-impact book.
Tailored Support by LSE Research Support
Teams across LSE Research Support collaborated to support Professor Shah with the development of the case study and her application for the ERC Award. Initially, the Research Policy Team worked with Professor Shah on developing her case study to effectively respond to key REF impact criteria, and to craft a narrative that best presented the value of her research even beyond academia. The team also liaised with her partners to solicit the most compelling corroborating statements of impact.
The Research Development and Research Policy Teams jointly identified the opportunity to apply for ERC’s Public Engagement with Research Award and advised Professor Shah to enter the competition. In addition, both teams provided several rounds of review of the application to maximise the quality prior to submission.
“I honestly would not have dreamt of even throwing my hat into this, were it not for our wonderful colleagues in Research Development and Knowledge Exchange and Impact. The support, understanding and care I received from these teams is immeasurable.”
– Professor Alpa Shah
Demonstrating Research Excellence
With excellent guidance from LSE’s designated teams, Professor Shah was able to secure the 2022 ERC Public Engagement with Research Award. Her ERC-funded research exposed the persistence of racialised discrimination and injustice despite globalisation and economic growth and showed how capitalist accumulation entrenched, rather than erased, the stigmas of social difference based on caste and tribe in India. With this work, Professor Shah reached out to a broad set of policy actors, such as NGOs, the UN International Labour Organization, and UK Members of Parliament. Professor Shah influenced public awareness on these issues through a visual exhibition curated in the UK and in Italy that reached more than 50,000 people. She also wrote a prize-winning book for a wide general audience, Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas, that successfully nuanced public discourse about why indigenous people were drawn to an armed left-wing insurgency, wrongly labelled as "terrorist", incarcerated and killed.
If you are interested in exploring how LSE Research Support can help you with your research idea, please get in touch with us via research.innovation@lse.ac.uk.