British Academy announces competitive research funding call for Tackling Slavery, Human Trafficking and Child Labour in Modern Business

The British Academy is launching today, 20 June 2017 a new, competitive research funding call, Tackling Slavery, Human Trafficking and Child Labour in Modern Business, in partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID).

This programme will fund excellent, policy-oriented UK research, aimed at addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and advancing the UK’s aid strategy, including a particular focus on eradicating forced labour, ending modern slavery and human trafficking and securing the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour.

These are challenges the business sector has a crucial role to play in tackling, given that it is estimated that many of the 45 million people enslaved in the world, and 75 million children employed in hazardous work, are employed within global supply chains.

The opportunity to businesses of tackling these problems is huge – unlocking more well trained, healthy and educated people will increase the productivity of global supply chains, and also create millions of new consumers.

The UK needs excellent problem-focused research, to fill the evidence gaps on our current understanding of what works in addressing slavery and child labour and to enable the UK to develop effective interventions.

The research programme will fund challenge-led research grants for groups of the best researchers across the humanities and social sciences, to examine research gaps in the field, how to bolster current interventions and explore what works especially at scale.  It is envisaged that teams, with different disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences, using a broad range of different methodological approaches, will apply for funding. Projects of up to 16 months in duration will be funded, with the maximum funding for each project at £200,000.

For more information and to download the call for proposals, please visit: www.britishacademy.ac.uk/tackling-slavery-human-trafficking-and-child-labour-modern-business 

Applicants are invited to submit their proposals by Wednesday 19 July 2017 (17.00 UK time).