Welcome to RPDD Research e-Briefing

RPDD Research e-Briefing is produced by the Research and Project Development Division and the Press and Information Office.

This e-Briefing aims to update you monthly with the most recent research funding opportunities, with research awards that the School has won and with examples of research outcomes.

This month we talk to PhD student Maria Koumenta about public service motivation in The Interview; invite you to take part in the ESRC strategic plan consultation; outline 12 funding opportunities and bring you results of research into Finnish drug regulation and the happiness of communities.

If you have colleagues who would like to receive this bulletin and may not at present, please email pressoffice@lse.ac.uk

June 2008

News

'Should people be paid to live healthier lives?' asks new research centre

A new Centre for the Study of Incentives in Health brings together economists, psychologists and philosophers to examine what motivates us to improve our health, how our behaviour can be affected by rewards and incentives, and which incentives are fair and ethical.

The centre, funded with £800,000 for five years by the Wellcome Trust, is the first to bring a cross-disciplinary team together to study these questions. The principal investigators will be economist Adam Oliver of LSE Health, Theresa Marteau, professor of health psychology at King’s College London and Richard Ashcroft, professor of bioethics at Queen Mary’s, University of London.  More

Give your view on the new ESRC strategic plan

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is developing a new Strategic Plan. This will settle its key funding priorities for 2009-14.  A national consultation is taking place over the next few months, and the LSE’s input is important.

The School is a major recipient of ESRC funding and consistently features in the top four UK universities ranked by ESRC funding volume. Over the last five years, we received £29.2million for research and training.

From next year, four LSE research centres will be funded by the ESRC: CARR (£2.8m); CEP (£5.1m); Centre for Spatial Economics (anticipated £3.5m, jointly funded by ESRC and DTI); and the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (£5m).

The School wishes to submit an institutional response and would value your considered input. Please would you forward your comments and reactions to Jo Hemmings by emailing j.hemmings@lse.ac.uk by Friday 29 August. More

AHRC - important changes to research grants scheme

From January 2009 the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will move to ‘open deadlines’ for research grant applications. This means that from January 2009 applicants will be able to submit standard, speculative and early career research grant applications at any time without having to worry about submitting for specific deadlines.

The March 2009 closing date of the research leave scheme is not affected by this move to open dates for research grants nor are any other deadlines under strategic programmes or other funding schemes.

More information on this will be included in the new funding guide, which will be issued later this year.

If you require any further information about these changes, please contact Ian Broadbridge on 0117 987 6681.

Individual researchers consultation event

Monday 28 July, 10am-1.30pm or 12-3.30pm, British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AH
The AHRC has expressed its commitment to individual researchers in its Strategic Plan 2007-12.

The AHRC currently supports individual researchers through the Research Leave scheme which provides salary and associated costs for periods of three or four months, to enable an individual researcher to bring a significant research project to completion.

The AHRC is currently seeking the views of the arts and humanities community to identify how we can best support individual researchers.

To register your interest for this event, please contact Jodie Mack by emailing j.mack@ahrc.ac.uk More

The interview

This week Research Briefing talks to PhD student Maria Koumenta. Now on the final stretch of her three year PhD, the LSE graduate is enthusiastic about the initial findings of her research into public service ethos.

The driving force behind our public services

Research into the behaviour of public sector employees is relatively new – the first major work into this subject was Perry and Wise’s Public Service Motivation Theory in 1992 – precisely why Maria chose it.

She said: “A PhD has to cover new ground and although there is literature on public service motivation, there is little if any research coupling the drive of people who work in the public sector with management practice, job design and personality traits. This is where my PhD is focusing – it’s very exciting and has huge practical implications for both the public and private sector.

“Public service ethos has a number of dimensions. People who have it will display an element of self-sacrifice, be compassionate, motivated to serve the public interest, have an interest in service delivery and quality, and be accountable and impartial. Think of nurses, doctors or firemen – people who we all consider will ‘go the extra mile’.”

Click here to read the full interview.

Funding opportunities

The RPDD Current Funding Opportunities page is where you can find all new sources of funding with over 50 different calls for proposals. Keep checking it between monthly issues of Research Briefing.

Candidates interested in applying for any of the opportunities below should contact Michael Oliver in RPDD at m.oliver@lse.ac.uk or call ext 7962.

Innovation Research Centre - invitation to submit full proposals

Deadline: Tuesday 22 July

The ESRC and partners are commissioning independent, multidisciplinary research focused on the broad role, drivers and impacts of innovation.

This call for proposals is for a core institution or partnership that is host to both a strategic research and capacity building programme and a knowledge exchange hub. A series of distributed projects carried out at other institutions will be commissioned at a later stage. More

EPSRC - INTERACT 6 building links with India

Deadline: Wednesday 30 July

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) invites applications to form Networks of researchers between the UK and India in all fields within EPSRC’s remit. These Networks will build close collaborative activities between researchers in the UK and India. More

Newton international fellowships

Deadline: Monday 4 August

Are you at the beginning of your research career - with the potential to be world-class? Is your research in the natural or social sciences, engineering or humanities? Do you want to build and maintain links with leading researchers in the UK? Then apply now for a Newton International Fellowship. More

ESRC - multiple exclusion homelessness

Deadline: Thursday 7 August

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and partners are inviting proposals for new research to this initiative. The aim of the initiative is to ensure that policy and practice responses to multiple exclusion homelessness are better informed by robust evidence. The specific objectives of the programme are:

• to develop a scientifically rigorous account of the relationship between homelessness and other dimensions of 'deep' social exclusion
• to attain a theoretically-informed understanding of the causes of multiple exclusion homelessness
• to shift thinking on multiple exclusion homelessness away from ‘a priori’ organisational categorisations, towards inductive analyses which start from the perspectives of people with relevant first-hand experience More

AXA Research Fund

Deadline: Monday 25 August

Interested members of staff  should contact Julia Zanghieri, Corporate Relations Unit, in the first instance by emailing j.zanghieri@lse.ac.uk or calling ext 3660.

The Fund makes a global annual donation of around six million euros to innovative research projects. Eligible applicants are research institutes with a high level of excellence and international scope situated within one of the European Union member states or within an associated country as defined in the FP7. More

Nuffield Foundation - developing tomorrow’s leading social science researchers

Deadline: Monday 1 September

This scheme aims to promote excellence in UK social science research capacity. This is not a conventional post-doctoral fellowship scheme as the fellowships support post-doctoral social scientists who have the potential to become outstanding in their field, giving them the opportunity to take a ‘change of direction’ – eg the acquisition of a substantive new body of knowledge, methodology or skill.  More

Understanding individual behaviour - exploratory networks

Deadline for expressions of interest: Wednesday 3 September
Deadline for proposals: Tuesday 23 September

The ESRC in collaboration with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Medical Research Council invites applications for innovative exploratory networks in the area of understanding individual behaviour. This call is for new bids for pump priming activities to support Exploratory Networks. More

EPSRC - science and heritage research clusters

Deadline: Thursday 4 September
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and EPSRC are jointly funding the Science and Heritage programme to support research exploring new ways to understand the cultural and physical nature of heritage and to prepare society for the challenges that cultural heritage will face in the 21st Century. More

EPSRC - energy interdisciplinary research clusters

Deadline: Thursday 4 September

EPSRC and ESRC are seeking to support a number of interdisciplinary Research Clusters under two key research themes:

• energy and equity
• sustainable energy and energy security

Up to £2M is available for this call and it is expected that up to five clusters will be funded in total. More

NORFACE research programme on migration

Deadline: Wednesday 10 September

The New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Collaboration in Europe (NORFACE) is launching a major international, multi-disciplinary, research programme called Migration in Europe - social, economic, cultural and policy dynamics. It has three main research themes:

• Causes and consequences of migration
• Integration
• Cohesion and conflict

Research teams must include participants from a minimum of three different NORFACE countries. More

The NIHR Public Health Research programme

Deadline: January 2009
The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) public health research programme will be launched in Autumn. The first call for proposals will be mid-November and funding decisions made in May. Please visit www.phr.ac.uk/  in October to receive further details on how to submit your proposal.