Projects are expected to be highly collaborative and include partners from outside the higher education sector. Approximately two to four grants worth between £2 million and £4m over a period of between 36 and 60 months are available.

Closing date: 10 October 2013

• The challenges of the Green Economy
• The challenges of Population Change

There will be a number of priority areas within these themes and researchers from these countries will be invited to submit proposals for joint projects in these areas. Researchers may have any disciplinary background within the social sciences and beyond, however, the proposal should be predominantly within the social sciences and applicants must satisfy the eligibility criteria of their home funding agency. Projects will also need to involve a number of Chinese and European partners; full guidance will be announced in the call.

Further information about the priority areas will be made available by the end of June 2013 with the full call launched in September. The closing date of the call will be in early December 2013.

Projects should be interdisciplinary, bringing together arts and humanities researchers, community engagement experts, specialists in digital technologies and other expertise as appropriate.

A total of £4 million is available, and grants are worth between £50,000 and £600,000 for projects of up to 18 months.

Closing date: 27 June 2013

Proposals may be submitted in any area of the social sciences within the remit of both agencies.

The grants are worth a minimum of £200,000 and applications can be submitted at any time.

Call for participants: A two-day Residential workshop will explore best practice from around the UK and beyond and strive to identify tools and ICT systems that can be harnessed to improve food product security, traceability, nutritional benefits and consumer confidence.

Closing Date: 01 September 2013

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/2013/Pages/foodsecurityimprovements.aspx

Call for Secondments between academic and industrial, commercial or governmental research groups

Expression of interest: The IT as a Utility Network+ is offering funding to support secondments between academic and industrial, commercial or governmental research groups (in either direction) that will help grow the ITaaU Network+ and the RCUK Digital Economy Theme.

Closing Date: 31 October 2013

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/2013/Pages/itaaunetworksecondment.aspx

Call for Expression of Interest for ITaaU Network Plus Pilot Studies

Expression of interest: The IT as a Utility network has issued a second call for Pilot Projects. Up to two projects, aiming for a wide coverage of the challenge area are available.

Closing Date: 07 June 2013

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/2013/Pages/itaaunetworkpluspilotstudies.aspx

Funding for each fellow will not normally exceed £6,000 and includes one scheduled airline return fare, accommodation and a daily allowance to cover all incidental expenses.

Closing date: 12 June 2013

Proposals should lead to the development of new multidisciplinary approaches to critical parts of the software development process, such as the capture of user requirements and understanding of user culture, and the translation of these into proposals for effective business methodologies suitable for small projects and budgets. 

The aim is to encourage software developers to work with partners with complementary expertise from non-software disciplines (such as the arts, humanities, user-centered and creative design and the social sciences), to explore new and more effective ways of working. As part of this multidisciplinary approach, innovative engagement with research expertise from across the full spectrum of the arts and humanities is encouraged. 

In particular, applications from companies that have recently been commissioned to create software for a client, or developers in non-software companies that have been commissioned to write software for in-house use, are encouraged. In both cases, projects should aim to improve software quality and performance by developing and exploring new collaborative software development processes with experts from other disciplines.

Projects must be business-led and collaborative, and should last up to six months.

Closing date: 10 July 2013

FLIP awards provide flexible opportunities for individuals (“the interchangers”) moving between different organisations, disciplines and sectors at all stages in their career beyond the PhD (or equivalent).

FLIP aims to:

• enhance opportunities for the exchange of knowledge, technology and people between the research base and user communities and vice versa for economic and/or societal benefit
• facilitate the development of partnerships to foster longer-term collaborations, thereby maximising the impact of previously-funded BBSRC research
• allow for an expansion of the skill base of individuals, particularly in emerging, niche and vulnerable areas alongside our strategic priorities

Closing date: 11 July 2013

Government policy on social care and welfare emphasises the importance of families in various ways either as a site of problems or as something to be supported. Families are seen in various ways: as ‘troubled’, the ‘bedrock of society’, or ‘hard working,’ a site for economic activity. But can they really be all of these things?

As we all know from our own personal lives, the notion of a ‘family’ is very complicated. It is clear that rather than families being the static structures thought by governments, they are live projects that are experienced via relationships between people. This has led to public services attempting to integrate their facilities around families in order to co-ordinate support and intervention. How to make sense of what to do about families has been tackled in recent research by the authors, who explore these issues through the lens of the ways in which the state shares information about families.

This event will be led by James Cornford from University of East Anglia with Rob Wilson, (Newcastle University) and Sue Baines (MMU), the authors of a recent paper on Representations of the Family and who have published extensively on multi-agency working and information sharing issues over the past decade. The event is co-hosted by the Centre for Knowledge Innovation Technology and Enterprise (KITE – Newcastle University) and the Institute for Local Governance. We expect interest to be high and places are limited. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Phillip Edwards at the ILG on 0191 334 9293

If you would like to book a place at this free event, please fill in the online registration form at: http://thinkingfamilyworkshop.eventbrite.co.uk

The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) is inviting applications for participation in a revolutionary sandpit workshop in the autumn looking for innovative approaches to shake up conventional thinking about institutional long-term care.

The aim of this sandpit is to bring together a varied group of up to 25 individuals from across the UK with the expectation that they work together to develop radical, risky and novel ideas that can then be developed into full proposals for industry led Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) projects. Academics can be fully involved as sub-contractors in the proposals. Following the sandpit the TSB will be awarding up to £2.4 million in such projects.

The TSB is keen to attract innovative thinkers from across the full range of academic disciplines, for example, management and business studies, sociology, economics, geography, legal studies, anthropology, social policy, engineering, design, ICT, maths or creative arts. 

The five-day sandpit will be held 16-20 September 2013. The deadline for applications is noon 12 June 2013. Briefings events for potential applicants will be held in Edinburgh, Leeds and London. 

Further information

TSB website