AHRC early career research

This grant aims to support collaborative research projects that require leadership from more than a single scholar. Its aim is to help new researchers at the start of their careers gain experience of managing and leading research projects.

You must include a principal investigator and at least one co-investigator jointly involved in the development and management of the project.

The grant funds projects with a full economic cost between £50,000 and £250,000 lasting up to five years.

We also have a standard research grant for larger projects with funding of up to £1 million.

We’re looking for early-stage researchers with proposals for well-defined research projects.

This scheme is not intended to support individual scholarship. You must be willing to collaborate with other individuals or organisations.

Collaboration in proposals can involve a single institution or a combination of institutions, and may involve people from the same or from different research areas. This can include collaboration between disciplines within the arts and humanities, or between an arts and humanities discipline and another subject area. In such collaborations the arts and humanities element of the project should lead in shaping the research questions, methods etc.

The project may involve researchers collaborating with researchers overseas or with colleagues within other sectors. The proposed collaboration should be appropriate for the specific needs of the research project.

You can apply if you are an early career researcher defined as either of the following:

• within eight years of receiving your PhD or equivalent professional training (measured from the date of successful PhD viva to the point of applying)
• within six years of your first academic appointment (paid contract of employment which lists research or teaching as the primary role).

These durations should exclude any period of career break. We define a career break as an extended period of time when you have not been actively engaged in scholarly research or teaching at a higher education institution. The career break could be, for example, for family care or health reasons.

Your proposal must include a principal investigator and at least one co-investigator. Each team member must contribute to:

• the development of the research proposal
• project leadership and management
• joint publication of authored research.

If you have already been a principal applicant or investigator on an AHRC-funded research grant, you will not be eligible to apply. Co-investigators do not have to be early-career researchers.

You can find more information on eligibility in our research funding guide (PDF, 1MB).