Aim
Our aim is to fund up to five grants for partnerships to deliver purposeful initiatives to increase the diversity of the NERC community (the research and innovation community that contributes to the diagnosis and cure of environmental challenges) and contribute to national influence and collaboration in the wider sectors that contribute to delivering NERC science now and in future.
This funding opportunity is invite only, open to successful recipients of the Opening up the Environment 2025 funding opportunity.
Scope
Your project will:
- work in partnership to deliver purposeful initiatives, identified in stage one of the programme (Opening up the Environment 2025). Partnerships could be across departments in an organisation, between research organisations or between research organisations and external companies and communities that are part of the wider research and innovation sector. Your activities will aim to increase the diversity of the UK environmental research community that contributes to the diagnosis and cure of environmental challenges
- showcase a broad range of people and skill sets (that is, increase diversity of representation) to inspire those who have potential to be part of the future UK workforce that will contribute towards diagnosing and delivering solutions to UK environmental challenges
- work with others to provide leadership and influence in the wider research and innovation community to lead the way in developing aspirational partnerships and initiatives to increase the diversity of the research and innovation community that diagnoses and cures environmental challenges, through broadening representation
- generate and share relevant lessons learned from the project and collaborative working, suitable for sharing with the wider research and innovation community
You should continue to consider approaches that look at enhanced support for additional requirements associated with working with, and inspiring individuals who may hold protected characteristics as defined by the Equality Act 2010. You can choose to focus on any appropriate area which addresses under-representation including supporting representatives who:
- have underrepresented protected characteristics
- come from varied geographical locations across the UK
- come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds, considering the potential for social mobility
- have followed varied or non-traditional career paths, taking into consideration lived experience
- have a wide variety of skillsets that contribute towards delivering environmental solutions
- for other reasons, may not identify themselves as being part of the NERC community, or may not be in receipt of NERC funding
For more information on the background of this funding opportunity, see the ‘Additional information’ section.
Your project will achieve the following objectives:
Create NERC science partnerships for the future
Your project will:
- continue to build on the learnings and outputs from the first stage of funding around organisational development, partnerships and support required to ensure representatives and communities are supported to have meaningful interactions and relationships that contribute to deliver activity that meets the aim of this funding opportunity
- reflect on the environment that your project operates within, ensuring projects remain equitable, supportive and inclusive. You may consider the potential of collaborating with broader work on research culture to leverage and deliver co-benefits. Where appropriate implement initiatives that help contribute towards creating the right environments for projects; through identifying, including, and showcasing a broader range of people and skillsets that contribute to delivering NERC environmental science
- work in partnership to deliver purposeful initiatives, identified in stage one of the programme. Activities will aim to increase the diversity of the NERC environmental research community that contributes to the diagnosis and cure of environmental challenges
- take best learnings from practice activities that aim to increase diversity, and where appropriate tailor them to suit the NERC research community. This may include leveraging existing activity in host institutions, NERC research centres (where applicable) and partners
- support relevant environmental science department leadership teams to work collaboratively within and across their organisations and partners to align and pilot with other departments, teams and others across the research and innovation community
Showcase a broad range of people, careers and career pathways to attract more diverse future talent
Your project will:
- showcase a broader range of people and skill sets (that is, increase diversity of representation) to inspire those who have potential to be part of the future workforce that will contribute towards diagnosing and delivering solutions to environmental challenges. Showcasing activities must hold the ambition to increase the diversity of the future NERC-funded research and innovation community
- open up NERC science to the widest possible talent pool, identifying a broader, more diverse possible pool of talent to become the NERC community of the future. Working in partnership to reach new potential talent, and ensuring these communities have equitable, inclusive opportunities to meaningfully engage with diverse representatives. This will include provision of the right support to create meaningful opportunities for individuals to see “someone like me” working in environmental science solutions
- fund bursaries for a diversity of representatives to become “champions”. Champions will inspire others from the widest possible talent pool (protected characteristics, geographic location, socio-economic backgrounds, career paths and skillsets) to consider future roles in the NERC research and innovation community. Champions will be empowered to lead activities that contribute towards others being able to see “someone like me” working in roles that contribute to delivering environmental solutions, and create the right environments for a broader range of individuals to feel like they truly belong. Champions will advise, challenge and guide the project leadership teams to identify and address the change required to open up environmental science to the widest possible future talent pool
- create the right environment and opportunities to actively support champions within individual institutions and embedded within the funded project. This will include champions having a meaningful role in the leadership team, professional development opportunities and access to appropriate resource to lead project related activities. Leadership teams will be expected to put in place appropriate mechanisms and governance opportunities to actively promote and enable this
For a further definition for the champions, see the ‘Additional Information’ section of this funding opportunity.
Contribute to national influence and collaboration in the wider environmental science sector
Working as part of the wider cohort of award holders, your project will:
- work with others to provide leadership and influence in the wider research and innovation community to lead the way in developing aspirational partnerships and initiatives to increase the diversity of the research and innovation community that diagnoses and cures environmental challenges, through broadening representation
- work collaboratively to reach beyond the current NERC-funded community, with the ambition to include wider research and innovation skillsets and disciplines that will contribute to the future diagnosis and cure of environmental challenges, including those not traditionally linked, for example digital and social science
- contribute towards the programme coordination group during annual reporting. Further details found in the ‘Additional information’ section
Evaluation and impact
Your project will:
- plan and deliver evaluation, which is meaningfully embedded throughout the duration of your project. Evaluation should focus on capturing the impacts achieved through the delivery of your funded work, and the positive changes it may have influenced within individual partnerships and institutions
- contribute towards the wider collaborative evaluation approach for the cohort of funded projects. This will include sharing relevant insight, contributing towards national resources focusing on supporting and enabling research institutions to collaborate and adopt best practices in increasing the diversity of representation in the NERC community
- actively contribute towards the creation of a safe and supportive learning environment within the cohort of funded projects by celebrating successes, sharing learnings from experiences and promoting a culture where iterative learning from failures is valued
An appropriate evaluation template will be co-designed with other funded projects and provided for use. Your project evaluations must have appropriately allocated resource and an evaluation plan.
Your evaluation approach must include:
- to what extent your project met its aims and objectives, including those of this funding opportunity
- celebration of achievements
- all learnings
- impacts and benefits achieved
- experience of receiving funding
Leadership team
You must create a leadership team founded on equitable partnerships with appropriate individuals, departments and organisations. Examples of achieving this could be through:
- ensuring equity across all the project members with clear roles and relationships, lines of responsibility and accountability, ways of working and safeguarding practices
- listening, collaborating and responding to needs, challenges and opportunities (with ability to adapt in-line with complex and uncertain situations), reciprocal learning
- planning in all costs associated with inclusion of the leadership team are fully justified and planning sufficient time for partnership activities
- considering potential issues of intellectual property
For this funding opportunity we require your leadership team to:
- have a minimum of two representatives with lived experience relating to the areas of under-representation you are intending to address. For example, if you are wishing to address barriers around accessibility for disabled members of staff, you are required to have two representatives with a lived experience of accessibility needs on your leadership team
- have professional enabling staff, beyond those usually involved in project delivery. This could include human resources (HR), recruitment representatives, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) specialists, engagement and communication specialists. These individuals’ involvements would not be funded from the estates and indirect costs awarded
- host professional development opportunities for PhD students and early career researchers via full appropriate involvement in the leadership team where possible. More experienced members of the team will be required to provide the right support for these individuals to meaningfully engage with their leadership team role
- recognise research and innovation associates, allocating specific roles and responsibilities where appropriate
- recognise those in their early to mid careers outside of research facing roles, for example early career support staff or technicians
Duration
The duration of this award is for two years.
Projects must start by 30 April 2026.
Funding available
The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £708,750. We will fund up to 80% of the FEC, totalling no more than £657,000 per project.
We will fund 80% of the FEC with the following exceptions:
- eligible costs for international project co-lead (previously co-investigator) involvement would be funded at 100%
This funding opportunity sources its funds from the NERC budget.
What we will fund
We will fund facilities costs for this funding opportunity.
What we will not fund
We will not fund:
- PhD studentship costs
- requests for equipment of £10,000 and over are not part of this funding opportunity. You should request smaller items of equipment (under £10,000 individually) under ‘Consumables (other directly incurred costs)’ in your application
- costs for ship and marine equipment (SME)
Supporting skills and talent
We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.
Trusted Research and Innovation
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I) is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.
As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how your proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.
Further guidance and information about Trusted Research and Innovation, including where you can find additional support.
Data management
You must adhere to UKRI open research policy and NERC data policy and complete the ‘Data management and sharing’ question.
For details of data centres, see the NERC Environmental Data Service.
We will pay the data centre directly on behalf of the programme for archival and curation services, but you should ensure that you request sufficient resource to cover preparation of data for archiving by the research team. Additional services from the data centres, such as database development or a specialist in project data management during your project, will need to be discussed with the relevant data centre prior to submission, costs for additional services will need to be funded from your grant.
Responsible research
Through our funding processes, we seek to make a positive contribution to society and the environment. This is not just through research outputs and outcomes but through the way in which research is conducted and facilities managed.
All NERC grant holders are to adopt responsible research practices as set out in the NERC responsible business statement.
Responsible research is defined as reducing harm or enhancing benefit on the environment and society through effective management of research activities and facilities. Specifically, this covers:
- the natural environment
- the local community
- equality, diversity and inclusion
You should consider the responsible research context of your project, not the host institution as a whole. You should take action to enhance your responsible research approach where practical and reasonable.
