Funding Opportunities for KEI

In June 2019 £10,000 was awarded to each LSE academic Department, for use to support any form of knowledge exchange with non-academic audiences during 2019/20.

Potential uses include - but are not limited to - activities supporting public and community engagement or the development of new relationships or partnerships with (for example) schools, local agencies, or the private, cultural and heritage sectors. They could also be used to develop colleagues’ KEI-related skills and capabilities.

The funds are intended to provide flexible, responsive support for departmental KE activities. The sorts of things they were used for in 2018/19 included:

• Events held at LSE for non-academic audiences
• Social media campaigns
• Seed-funding for larger KE activities
• Travel to and/or from LSE to facilitate engagement with non-academics
• Any other activity directly engaging with stakeholders and/or end-users of research
• Matched funding for KE activities that have attracted external support
• KE training events and/or materials to develop skills and capabilities within Departments

Departments are able to allocate the funds at their discretion, but are encouraged to support activities led by colleagues without previous experience of Knowledge Exchange.

Criteria

Departments are free to allocate funds in whatever way they deem most conducive to supporting engagement with their research. The only stipulation is that the funds had to facilitate engagement with people or organisations beyond academia.

Each Department is required to nominate an academic contact to meet with the KEI Integrated Service to discuss effective KE and public engagement activities and what support for these can be provided centrally.  A Professional Services contact also has to be appointed to support the financial management of the funds. Funds can be used by anyone conducting research at the School, including PhD students.

A short report setting out how funds have been spent is required to be sent to research.kei@lse.ac.uk in August 2020. 

If your plans have been disrupted due to coronavirus, you can carry unspent funds over to 2020/21. You should still complete a brief report covering your 2019/20 activities.

Departments will receive a further £10k allocation for 2020/21. All funds must be spent by 31 May 2021.

The REF Strategy Committee (REFSC) has a budget to support various aspects of the School’s preparations for the next REF, to take place in 2021.  Part of this budget has been set aside to assist individuals to enable them to produce 4* impact case studies who would otherwise struggle to achieve this. 

Applications up to £25,000 will be considered but smaller applications are also encouraged.  REF impact support may take the form of:

• Support for travel and subsistence in order to collect and/or corroborate impact evidence from research users;
• Provision of research assistants including occasional research assistants to collect impact evidence;
• Costs of undertaking impact evaluation where this can help to demonstrate the reach and significance of the potential impact case study.
• Exceptionally, buy-out of academic time, using the School’s existing internal formula, with the agreement of the Head of Department.

All of the above must be genuinely expected to lead to the production of 4* impact case studies for REF 2021 which would otherwise be difficult for the individual(s) to produce and which are not already supported by other forms of funding.

Download the full guidance and application form.

Applications should be emailed as a Word document to Jo Hemmings.