COMPREHENSIVE SPENDING REVIEW 07
Delivery Plan

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Summary

With its grant-in-aid, the British Academy will administer a distinctive programme of research support, which complements the Research Councils in a way vital for the humanities and social sciences. Drawing on its distinguished Fellowship for academic direction and peer review, the Academy’s funding will be targeted on the best researchers, at all levels but especially early-career, facilitating work of the highest quality, building a healthy knowledge base and fostering translational impact.

In this triennium we will as a priority focus our support on early career research, and raise the number of Postdoctoral Fellowships awarded annually to at least 45 each year.

We will develop the historic lead role the Academy has played in sustaining international research links and collaboration – a unique asset to the UK research community – by expanding and strategically focusing our activities on the regions of the world of the greatest significance – economic, social, and cultural – for the UK, and contributing to intercultural understanding. We will deliver 25% of the new International Visiting Fellowship scheme, to be introduced in the next triennium, a scheme designed to attract the most promising young researchers from overseas to the UK .

The Academy will deliver enhanced communications, outreach and policy work which will make a major contribution to UK economy and society, supporting the most dynamic sectors of the economy, clarifying social, economic and cultural options, strengthening the conceptual underpinning of knowledge transfer.

Introduction

1. The Academy has been allocated the following Grant-in-Aid for 2008-2011, following the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review 2007.

	[2007-8]	2008-9	2009-10	2010-11
Grant-in-Aid baseline	£21,385,000	£22,539,790	£25,061,939	£26,447,813

NB Grant-in-Aid in 2007-8 was supplemented by end-year flexibility of £1.2m, producing total resource of £22,585,000.

1. This delivery plan reflects the amount and terms of this Grant-in-Aid, and supports the strategic objectives published by the Department of Innovation, Universities & Skills. It will allow the Academy to fund research on the basis of 80% FEC. It will enable the Academy to develop its work in support of the UK research base in the humanities and social sciences, supporting and promoting research, increasing access to the best research internationally and engaging with the public and policy-makers. The delivery plan builds on rigorous evaluation of existing activities and re-prioritisations within the Academy’s portfolio, supported by independent consultation with its community.
2. The Academy will maintain its support for world-class research across its full disciplinary remit. As the national academy for the humanities and social sciences, the British Academy’s mission is to promote, sustain and represent advanced research. Complementing the Research Councils, we play a distinctive role in supporting individuals rather than (in the main) financing major projects and institutions. This is of particular value in the humanities and social sciences, in view of the nature of research in these disciplines and the relatively small share of total research funding distributed by the research councils for these disciplines. We are able to draw on our distinguished Fellowship base to ensure high-quality programmes and outcomes.
3. Our research support is manifested through a number of strategic priorities.
   • In its research programme, the Academy complements the support offered by the Research Councils. Its strategy is focused on providing targeted, often small-scale support, stimulating innovation and diversity, and its objective is to foster high-quality research and to help develop research capacity and researchers through a framework of primarily responsive-mode programmes.
   • Through links with overseas partners and institutions, some of them long-standing, the Academy aims to promote international collaboration and cultural interchange.
   • Through an active and varied communications programme, the Academy engages with a wide range of publics, to foster debate with policy-makers and others, and to publish and disseminate new knowledge and ideas in a variety of media.
4. Building on its key strengths, the Academy will enhance its role in three priority areas during the period of CSR 07:
   • maintaining the health of the UK research base and developing capacity;
   • providing international leadership in priority regions, building an integrated programme of support;
   • communicating and disseminating new knowledge and contributing to public policy development.

Maintaining the health of the UK research base

1. The Academy has historic strengths in maintaining a healthy and diverse research base in the UK, especially in early-career development.

Early career

1. We will extend our flagship programme to support early career development by increasing the number of Postdoctoral Fellowship awards, making 45 awards annually. These awards are of huge significance in the humanities and social sciences, where (in contrast to the sciences) there are few alternative sources of support at this level. The exceptionally high demand from and low success rate of applicants for the programme is testimony to the quality of the scheme. So too is its success in encouraging the most outstanding talent into the academic profession and in developing knowledge of great value and wide public interest.
2. Postdoctoral Fellowships are one of the Academy’s most popular and successful programmes; the awards are highly valued, prestigious, and offer a significant contribution to the trained pool of early-career researchers who go on mainly to provide new generations of the academic profession, but also develop transferable skills of benefit to a wide range of other industries of strategic and dynamic significance to the UK economy and society, including policy work, legal and financial services, heritage and tourism.
3. The awards will contribute to the Academy’s support for endangered and emerging subjects; and will also contribute to diversity by offering flexibility for non-standard entry levels, part-time working and maternity leave, designed to support a broad constituency of researchers.
4. We will continue to work with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council to develop a co-ordinated approach to the support of early-career researchers.

Investment

We will spend £7,807,259 (2008-9), £9,973,557 (2009-10) and £10,823,105 (2010-11) of grant in-aid on early career support (Postdoctoral Fellowships)

Deliverables

We will offer 45 new Postdoctoral Fellowship awards each year.

Impact

• The Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme identifies those with the potential to be the intellectual leaders of the future. Currently 85% of Postdoctoral Fellows go on to academic careers beyond the end of the Fellowship.
• Research carried out offers a distinctive contribution to many key academic and policy issues in humanities and social sciences, from the causes of criminal behaviour to the challenges of educational failure, from the roots of political theory to the cultural history of Asia.

Mid-career

1. The Academy will deliver a new programme (British Academy Research Development Awards, BARDAS) of flexible opportunities for mid-career researchers to enable them to concentrate on research, at their creative peak, freed from the constraints of teaching and administration. Building on the Academy’s traditional strength in identifying outstanding scholars at all stages of the academic life-course, new British Academy Research Development Awards will support mid-career scholars in developing new programmes of research.

Investment

We will spend £3,750,000 (2008-9), £3,400,000 (2009-10) and £3,400,000 (2010-11) of grant in-aid on mid-career support.

Deliverables

We will provide 50 awards p.a., involving flexible options for mid-career research support ranging from short-term buy outs to longer periods for concentrated research.

Impact

• The recognition of excellence and leadership in these awards contributes to the career development of a key research cohort, and to the publication, dissemination and application of significant research results.
• Academic creativity will be fostered by encouraging scholars to develop ground-breaking modes of enquiry.
• Awards will contribute to the Academy’s support for endangered and emerging fields.
• Awards will promote innovation by stimulating engagements between academics and partners, enabling the application of knowledge to new publics, dynamic sectors of the economy, and the public sector.

Research awards

1. We will expand the opportunities offered through our research grants programme to offer a flexible package of support to promote creativity and innovation, and to optimise the research productivity of UK-based researchers. We will offer a fast-track route to a distinctive channel of largely responsive-mode, small-scale funding. Access to modest grants, the deployment of which impose minimal burden on the infrastructural and other resources of the host institution, is widely acknowledged by research-active scholars to be valuable out of all proportion to the size of award in fostering original research, and is a critical part of the national research funding provision. The Academy’s research grants programme was the number one priority in the recent survey of the relevant research community.
2. We will expand the opportunities for innovative research, at all levels, so as to foster creativity and maximise the opportunities for exciting, possibly high-risk inquiry to be pursued. Added advantages include the fast-tracking of specially talented researchers, and the broadening of the pool of research ideas from which Research Councils may then select full-scale project bids for funding. Speculative, blue skies research is an essential component in a healthy research base: there are often unexpected outcomes and applications in other fields, quite unrelated to the original focus of research. The British Academy has a commitment to fostering curiosity-driven research, and will keep a proportion of its funding stream available for such activity.
3. Since its establishment in 1902, the Academy has included both the humanities and the social sciences in its remit. It plays a special role in fostering research that crosses disciplinary boundaries, and is well-placed to enhance this aspect of its mission. With new investment, the Academy seeks to build upon its role in relation to innovation and interdisciplinarity both within its own research programmes and through building partnerships with the other Academies and the Research Councils.

Investment

We will spend £3,616,650 (2008-9), £3,083,863 (2009-10) and £3,268,811 (2010-11) of grant in-aid on research awards.

Deliverables

We will maintain this critical form of research support, making some 550 awards annually.

Impact

The research grants programme:

• promotes innovation, creativity and diversity through relatively small investments, funding excellence wherever it is located;
• develops capacity by enabling early-career scholars to undertake independent research in the UK or overseas;
• maintains a distributed and vigorous research culture across the UK, recognising the diversity of knowledge-makers throughout the UK (including independent scholars);
• results in rapid outputs and outcomes of value for the knowledge base underpinning key sectors, including the creative and cultural industries, heritage and tourism, stimulating local economies and generating broad social and cultural benefits;
• contributes to the development of evidence-based public policy – recent examples include diversity training in the police, the work-life balance in employment, predicting health behaviours, gender issues in post-conflict Iraq;
• leverages onward investment through UK or international funding agencies.

Leadership in International Research especially Collaboration and Exchanges

1. For many decades, the Academy has played a leading role in representing British researchers overseas and has extensive and valuable experience of the ways of developing the institutional support needed to maximize the effectiveness of research in other countries. We will sustain the visibility and coherence of the UK’s international research activity through our programmes and through enhanced integration of the different components of our international activities. The Academy’s international reach makes an important and distinctive contribution to research in the humanities and social sciences, complementing the Research Councils. We will harness our traditional strengths more effectively to support and respond to the priorities identified in national research strategies and to strengthen international engagement in research and development.
2. We will develop our international leadership under three principal headings: policy formulation, research delivery, and underpinning investment.

International policy formulation

1. Research in the humanities and social sciences has the potential to make a fundamental contribution to the critical international policy issues of today – including economic development, demographic change, migration patterns, international terrorism, peace-keeping, climate change, poverty, energy supplies, language skills, political governance and cultural identity. Understanding of cultural background and mores enhances business development and socio-economic research evidence is essential for appropriately informed policy-making. The Academy will engage our unique network of connections and a wide range of other stakeholders to support the development of strategic research agendas relevant to these topics and the full exploitation of research outcomes to inform UK and international policy development. We will work to ensure that the humanities and social sciences have a full share within EU Framework Programmes.

International research delivery

1. The Academy will direct funds to stimulate research in and on geographical regions of global economic, political and cultural significance. Through targeted collaborative interventions in priority regions, we will help ensure that the UK engages successfully with areas of increasing strategic importance. We will continue our successful initiatives with respect to Africa, Latin America and China and expand our activities to develop strong links with the Middle East and South Asia. This will ensure UK access to the best of world scholarship, support the exchange of researchers in both directions to promote mutual understanding and learning, and boost the profile of the UK as a centre of global research excellence.
2. Visiting Fellowships are a proven Academy mechanism for attracting key researchers to UK, now recognised new International Fellowships, in which we will play a key role, delivering 25% (i.e. 12 Fellows p.a.) of the new scheme, to be introduced in this triennium. Academy programmes promote mobility both from and into the UK, and international collaboration. The Academy has long-standing bilateral programmes relating to countries of strategic significance to the UK and is developing new connections. Exchange and collaboration also support long-term partnerships between UK and overseas universities and contribute to the intercultural understanding necessary to underpin commercial and scientific advances.

Underpinning investment

1. A key enabler for these policy and delivery objectives will be a programme of focused investment in the organisation of human capital and targeted infrastructure. Our pioneering Area Panels of experts will be drawn together and further developed to lead in building innovative strategic research agendas and institutional partnerships across the regions of the world, focusing on those of major significance – economic, social and cultural – to the UK.
2. The network of British research schools, institutes and societies supported by the Academy will receive investment to enable them to provide on-the-ground facilities, resources and flexibility needed by the UK research community in pursuing an increasingly strategic, complex and multidisciplinary set of research activities. They will broaden their remit to cover a wide spread of disciplines, geographical regions, and chronological range. We will identify opportunities to invest to make a material difference to policy topics of profound significance to the UK’s interests, particularly in the Islamic world, and to contribute to intercultural understanding within the UK.

Investment

We will spend £4,650,000 (2008-9), £4,580,000 (2009-10) and £4,712,000 (2010-11) of grant in-aid on Leadership in International Research. We will spend a further £1,305,000 (2009-10) and £1,408,000 (2010-11) as part of the new International Fellowships scheme.

Deliverables

We will maintain our programme of Area Panels, policy workshops, partnership agreements, research networks, and overseas facilities, enabling UK researchers to undertake strategically important research overseas;

We will deliver International Fellowships in the humanities and social sciences, rising to 12 p.a., to attract the best young overseas research scholars to the UK to pursue their work.

Impact

• The facilitation of intercultural dialogue and understanding.
• Improved UK policy-making, informed by research into the historical, economic, political and cultural dimension of international relations.
• The promotion of the key roles of, for example, culture and heritage in sustainable development.
• Illumination of the diverse roots of the modern United Kingdom and European Union.
• Enhancing the reputation of UK as a global centre of scholarly expertise.

Communications, Outreach and Policy Development

1. We are committed to an active programme to support the dissemination of the results of research to a broad range of publics. We will continue to support academic meetings, primarily designed for specialist audiences of scholars. We will focus on expanding our programme of public events, intended for wider audiences, bringing together leading academics and members of the public in lively debate. We will build up our programme of specialist workshops, an innovation that brings together practitioners from the worlds of academia, government and business on matters of common concern.
2. We will build partnerships with HEIs and other organisations to sponsor events and debates in centres outside London, to reach more diverse audiences. We will develop a themed programme within which events can be grouped, to maximise public and other engagement. We will develop a programme of events and publications designed to showcase the value of UK research and bring the fruits of Academy-funded research to new audiences. We will continue to offer support for individuals to present the results of their research to academic peers and to wider publics. We will expand opportunities to bring together cutting-edge academic researchers and policy makers, to foster informed debate and to promote effective public policy.

Investment

We will spend £375,000 (2008-9), £375,000 (2009-10) and £475,000 (2010-11) of grant in-aid on communications, outreach and policy development.

Deliverables

We will offer an integrated strategy of conference support to showcase the best UK scholarship. We will deliver a programme of activities and publications that involve a range of publics in the work of the Academy and the wider humanities and social sciences community, delivering a step-change in the visibility and impact of the work of the Academy. We will deliver targeted contributions to policy and public debates, involving key stake-holders and policy-makers.

Impact

• The promotion of the value of the humanities and the social sciences, and UK research.
• Harnessing public interest in disciplines such as archaeology, history, film and in learning about other cultures.
• Contribution to building the evidence-base relevant for policy development, and informing policymakers of its value and importance.
• Increased visibility of the Academy as a leader on behalf of the humanities and social sciences.

Operating costs

1. We will explore the possibility for sharing systems and services with other Academies. We will adapt peer review practices to minimise the costs on the academic community whilst preserving full academic credibility in decision-making. We will deliver 5% p.a. efficiencies in operating costs.

Grant-in-Aid summary

Activity	2007-08	2008-09	2009-10	2010-11
Early career (Postdoctoral Fellowships)	5,823,000	7,807,259	9,973,557	10,823,105
Mid-career (BARDAs)	4,390,000	3,750,000	3,400,000	3,400,000
Research awards (Grants and projects)	4,216,000	3,616,650	3,083,863	3,268,811
International leadership	5,106,000	4,650,000	4,580,000	4,712,000
New International Fellowships	0	0	1,305,000	1,408,000
Communications, outreach & policy	365,000	375,000	375,000	475,000
National Academy (incl. operating costs)	2,335,000	2,340,881	2,344,519	2,360,897
Special projects	350,000	0	0	0
Total	22,585,000	22,539,790	25,061,939	26,447,813

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