Funding opportunity

Funding opportunity: ESRC-MOST UK-Taiwan networking grant

Opportunity status:: Closed
Funders:: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Co-funders:: Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST)
Funding type:: Grant
Total fund:: £250,000
Maximum award:: £31,000
Publication date:: 3 November 2020
Opening date:: 3 November 2020 12:01am UK time
Closing date:: 7 January 2021 4:00pm UK time

The Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is now officially named the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), Taiwan.

This call seeks to improve the connectivity between UK and Taiwan social science research communities, by providing funding to groups of researchers to foster the development of relationships.

Proposals should contain a UK component, to be funded by ESRC, and a Taiwan component, to be funded by MOST.

This page provides details on the UK component of the proposal, to be submitted to ESRC. A corresponding Taiwan component of the proposal must be submitted to MOST. These two separate applications must contain a common document detailing the jointly developed programme of work.

Applications to ESRC for the UK component must be submitted by a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding.

Proposals may be submitted in any area of the social sciences. The application must be within both ESRC’s and MOST’s remit.

The total budget for the UK component of this call is £250,000 (80% of the full economic cost (fEC) will be funded by ESRC) and NT$12,400,000 is available for the Taiwan component of the call (100% of costs will be funded by MOST).

Who can apply

Applications to the UK component of the proposal must be submitted by a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding.

Check if your organisation is eligible

The principal investigator of the UK component must be a UK-based researcher and of postdoctoral level or higher.

The lead of the Taiwan component should be identified as an international co-investigator on the proposal.

The application must be within both ESRC’s and MOST’s remit.

Grant start date is from May 2021.

What we're looking for

This call seeks to improve the connectivity between UK and Taiwan social science research communities, by providing funding to groups of researchers to foster new connections, identify common interests, build networks and develop common research agendas, helping to lay the groundwork for future collaborative research activity.

The intention is that the networking activities supported through these grants will enable new relationships between UK and Taiwan researchers to be formed, for existing relationships to be strengthened, and for the overall level of connection between the UK and Taiwan social science communities to be enhanced.

Applicants are encouraged to develop innovative and creative programmes of activity.

Examples of activities which might be involved include but are not limited to:

mobility, networking and travel for one or more investigators in either direction
scoping studies
website or digital costs
workshops to explore future collaboration opportunities
researcher exchanges
visiting positions or fellowships for early career researchers or staff exchanges.

The total budget for the UK component of this call is £250,000 (with ESRC meeting 80% of the fEC) and an amount of NT$12,400,000 is available from MOST for the Taiwan component of the call (with MOST meeting 100% of costs).

The UK component of a proposal may be a maximum of £31,000 (100% fEC, ESRC will meet 80% of fEC) and the Taiwan component of the proposal has an equivalent limit of NT$1,240,000 (funded at 100%).

The maximum proposal length is 18 months.

The deadline for applications is Thursday 7 January 2021.

How to apply

council: ESRC
document type: Je-S
scheme: Networking
call/type/mode: Grants

How we will assess your application

The separate but aligned UK and Taiwan applications will undergo separate assessment processes by ESRC and MOST respectively. The ESRC assessment of the UK proposal is as follows.

Proposals will be assessed through an open, competitive process using quality as the primary assessment criterion.

A panel of experts drawn from the social sciences will form the UK assessment panel, and evaluate all proposals against the following criteria:

proposed activities: quality and coherence, scale of ambition and feasibility (for example, in addressing language and cross-cultural communication issues)
partners’ involvement and the strength of collaboration: the level of contribution from Taiwan collaborators will be taken into account
the added value to UK social science through the partnership
the benefits and future joint research likely to accrue from the collaboration
the uniqueness of the opportunity and the expertise of the UK applicants and their Taiwan partner(s) (meaning, where the collaboration is in an area of particular research strength for one or more of the collaborators)
the breadth of researchers engaged in the activity and the opportunities for engaging early career researchers
if the application is to supplement an ongoing partnership, applicants should specify what new aspects will be delivered by this grant
the expected output(s) of the grant (for example, development of joint research proposals, joint publications, joint conferences)
value for money: the level of contribution made by the UK institution towards development of the grant.

We will be looking to support a portfolio of projects which spans a good disciplinary range.

Once the separate UK and Taiwan panels have had their separate meetings they will have produced their own separate funding recommendations. Representative(s) from each panel will then come together for a joint meeting, to combine these separate funding recommendations into one final joint funding recommendation.

The UK panel meeting will take place February 2021.

The funding decision is expected April 2021.

Grant start date is from May 2021.

Contact details

For further details please contact: UKTaiwanNetworking@esrc.ukri.org.

If you have any questions on the Taiwan component of this call please contact: cmtom@most.gov.tw.

Additional info

ESRC is aware of potential untapped collaboration opportunities between the UK and Taiwan in the social sciences. Recent analysis has shown that Taiwanese co-applicants were among the most under-represented when considering the volume and quality of social science being undertaken in Taiwan.

MOST is a Taiwanese agency for scientific and technological development. It is the largest funding agency for academia and supervises the national science parks as well as national laboratories and centres for research.

MOST is also the largest funding agency for social sciences in Taiwan. With the joint support from its Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and Department of International Cooperation and Science Education, MOST considers the UK an ideal but under-explored international partner that has complementary expertise while sharing a lot in common in the social sciences.

This is the largest UK-Taiwan call in the area of social sciences and both funders have a continued aspiration for deepening collaboration in the social sciences, which can capitalise on the links built through this networking call.