The call Strategic Research Fund: Employment for Stability provides funding for strategic research that investigates the correlation between employment and stability in a specific set of fragile or conflict affected Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs), or for research into the key drivers and challenges determining employment strategies of the private sector in these countries. The main applicant should be employed as a senior researcher at one of the research organisations (worldwide) involved.

Closing date 12 May 2014

Funder’s website

The Centre for Economic Policy Research, through its Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries initiative, invites applications for its major research grants. These grants will support research that aims to better understand what determines the strength of market forces driving efficiency in low-income countries. Proposals should address the following themes:

•modelling market frictions in LICs using newly available data;

•micro-foundations of aggregate private sector performance;

•the dynamics of small and medium-sized enterprises – informality and entrepreneurship;

•the role of export-oriented industries in driving growth;

•micro studies of markets, including the role of intermediaries and contractual enforcement;

•identifying high growth microenterprises;

•agglomeration and other issues related to cities and firms.

Proposals that address cross-cutting issues such as fragile and conflict-affected states, gender, and climate, environment and social compliance are encouraged.

Organisations and institutions worldwide may apply. Joint proposals from consortia will be considered provided they have an appropriate legal arrangement. Grants are designed to fund teaching buyouts for principal investigators, research assistance and data collection and surveys in LICs. Grants are worth a minimum of £100,000, with an average grant size of £300,000. There is no upper limit.

Funder’s webpage

The Department for International Development (DFID) and ESRC are continuing their strategic partnership with a dedicated research programme on ‘Education and development: Raising learning outcomes in education systems’. Both funders are committed to commissioning world class research and ensuring the results are available for policymakers and development workers worldwide.

The programme will generate world-class and cutting-edge policy-relevant research that addresses key questions on learning outcomes within education systems in developing countries. The ultimate aim is to provide policymakers and practitioners with concrete ideas on how to improve learning and understanding of how these will translate to their specific contexts and institutions, enabling more effective policies and interventions.

In total £20 million has been allocated to the programme, which will be awarded through three annual research calls. Each call will have a core thematic focus, but opportunities will also be provided for other innovative research on learning outcomes and education quality, as well as larger-scale work addressing the lack of high quality data in education and development research. Proposals are sought from across the social sciences and may be for fundamental or more applied research topics, as long as the policy relevance is clearly articulated. There are no geographic restrictions on who may apply for this funding opportunity: researchers from developing and developed countries can work together in any configuration of their choosing, and principal investigators can be from anywhere in the world.

The 2013-2014 call is focused on the theme ‘effective teaching’. A total of up to £5 million is being made available for full proposals to three different types and scale of grant within this call.

The full specification and other relevant documents can be found here.

The Natural Environment Research Council, in partnership with the Department for International Development and the Economic and Social Research Council, invites outline proposals for consortium grants under the programme on Unlocking the Potential for Groundwater for the Poor. Consortium grants will provide an opportunity to undertake large-scale, complex and interdisciplinary social and natural science research addressing the programme’s aim of enabling sustainable use of groundwater for the benefit of poor people. Proposals should address at least two of the following three themes:

•understanding the resource;

•governance, institutions and access;

•impacts of future trends.

The primary focus of the research must be low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a clear impact of the research on the poor, projects may be undertaken in middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Projects must be interdisciplinary and include both social and natural science.

Linkages with sub-Saharan institutions must be established, and UPGro encourages collaboration with non-academic and community organisations. There are no other restrictions on where researchers are located or their nationality, nor are there restrictions on the geographical location of the research institution.

The total budget for this call is £7.6 million. Proposals may request a budget of up to £1.9m at 100 per cent of full economic costs. UK organisations will receive 80 per cent of full economic costs, and non-UK organisations will receive support of 100 per cent of direct costs plus a proportion of indirect costs. Between three and five consortium grants are available, and projects may last for up to four years each.

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European Union Institute for Security Studies, EU

The European Union Institute for Security Studies invites applications for its transatlantic postdoctoral fellowship for international relations and security. This enables candidates who have recently received their doctorate in social and political sciences or economics, and whose work focuses on international relations, peace or security issues, to spend three eight-month stays at participating research institutions or think tanks. At least one stay must be on the Eastern side of the Atlantic and one on the Western side. Each candidate must have successfully defended their PhD by 1 October 2014 and must either be a citizen or a resident of the US, Canada or Europe for at least two and a half years in the five years before the application deadline.

Funding provides a monthly stipend of €1,800, a monthly health insurance allowance of €200 and a one-time travel allowance of €3,500 for travel to and from the host institutions.

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The Sasakawa Peace Foundation invites applications for its grants. These offer support for projects addressing problems in the fields of international understanding, exchange, and cooperation. Priority areas are:

•efforts to ensure peace and security in the international community, including peace building and security issues, and non-traditional security issues;

•addressing positive and negative aspects of globalisation, including market and disparities issues, issues involving demographic changes and population movement, and issues at the interface between science and technology and society;

•promotion of mutual understanding between priority regions and Japan, including an exchange programme between Japan and US.

The foundation also has the following special funds: Pacific island nations fund; Japan-China friendship fund; Pan-Asia fund; Middle East Islam fund.

Non-profit organisations and voluntary organisations are eligible to apply for grants. Grants will not be awarded for purely theoretical research, to businesses, or to individuals. There is no upper limit for grants amount, but most awards have previously fallen between US$20,000 and US$100,000 over one to three years.

Click here for the original funding call and further details

The European University Institute, through the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, invites applications for the global governance fellowships. These allow postdoctoral research for one to two academic years. Preference is given to proposals within the following domains:

•climate governance;

•cultural pluralism;

•development;

•global economics;

•international trade observatory;

•modes of global governance.

Up to 10 fellowships are available each year, two of which are awarded to candidates working on European comparative politics or European comparative history as Vincent Wright fellowships. Fellows work on a selected topic and are expected to participate actively in the research activities of the Centre. The research done during the fellowship should lead to publication. Fellowships are open to candidates who defended their PhD no more than seven years before 31 July of the year of application. There are no restrictions on nationality. The fellowship carries a monthly stipend of €2,000, plus up to €300 per month if the fellow has a cohabiting partner and €200 per month for each dependent child. Fellows, but not their families, receive one return trip from their home town to Florence, worth up to €1,200 for return travel.

For further details see the original post.

The International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics (IGC) invites researchers to submit proposals for high-calibre research projects relevant to growth policies in developing countries. The deadline is 11:59pm GMT, 30th November 2013.

The IGC is building on previous work and streamlining its research with a sharper focus on key research questions that are relevant for growth within the following four broad themes, where we have also received great interest from policymakers: (i) state effectiveness, (ii) firm capabilities, (iii) cities, and (iv) energy.

Please note that two of the attached documents provide further information on the IGC’s specific research and country areas of focus – ‘IGC Research Priorities’ provides further details of the priority areas within these four themes, while ‘IGC Countries Priorities’ highlights areas of policymaker demand and research opportunities in IGC’s partner countries (currently Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India – Central and Bihar –  Liberia, Myanmar, Mozambique, Pakistan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). Included in this call is a special Call for Liberia and Sierra Leone. Please see the attached document ‘IGC Liberia and Sierra Leone Call’.

Please submit all central proposals (i.e. not including those for the special Call for Sierra Leone and Liberia) using the ‘IGC Proposal Form’ (recently revised and attached here). These proposals should be submitted to the Research Programme Committee at  with the following subject line: “Research theme (one of the four mentioned above), Project Title”. The final date for receiving research proposals is 11:59pm GMT, 30th November 2013. Funding decisions will be taken by a Commissioning Board by the end of January 2014. Researchers will be notified of the Boards’ decisions soon after this date, and we expect contracts to be finalized shortly thereafter. Please note that further opportunities to respond to calls for proposals will follow in 2014.

Please also find attached a set of guidelines – ‘IGC Notes for Applicants’ – which will be useful to researchers when drafting proposals for this funding round. The standard terms and conditions, which will form a part of conditions for a successful research award, are also attached (as ‘IGC Terms & Conditions’). Among other issues, this document covers how the IGC will treat requests for Principal Investigator remuneration, and also our procedures and requirements regarding institutional overheads.

The IGC will assess the submitted proposals against the following criteria, which are further discussed in the ‘IGC Notes for Applicants’ (although these are applicable for all IGC projects, special provisions may be in place for individual country calls):

(i) The extent to which the proposed research is innovative and contributes to substantive creation of knowledge, specifically helping to expand and strengthen the existing relevant literature on growth and development.

(ii) Whether and how the proposed research can be used to inform better and more evidence-based policymaking in developing countries.

(iii) The makeup of the research teams and contribution to local capacity.

(iv) Value for money.

This call for proposals encompasses both IGC Research and Country Programmes. While these two do overlap substantially in their remits, their focuses do differ to some extent. While there is some preference for proposals that respond to policy demands in the IGC’s partner countries, the IGC will continue to support frontier research proposals which have policy implications for growth in all developing countries. While funding decisions will be made centrally, projects can be sponsored under the umbrella of either the Country or the Research Programme, or potentially jointly.

Note: several IGC countries have recently issued separate calls for proposals. Applicants who submitted proposals under those country calls cannot resubmit them for consideration here.

Given the number of proposals expected, we are unlikely to be able to respond to individual enquiries regarding the submission process and commissioning processes.  However, we will be updating the ‘IGC Call for Proposals FAQ’ regularly, to ensure all commonly raised queries are addressed.

For further details view the original post.