Applying for Research Funding through Social Anthropology

The Department of Social Anthropology hosts research funded by the UK research councils, the national academies, charitable trusts, and international funders including the European Research Council. We are always glad to hear from researchers who would like to bring an award here, whether you are already at Cambridge or applying from elsewhere.

This page sets out how research funding applications work in the Department: who to talk to, what we need from you, and how long it takes. If you have a scheme in mind and are not sure where to begin, email the School Research Grants Assistant (SRGA) at research@socanth.cam.ac.uk. You are required to notify the SRGA of any intention to apply no less than six weeks prior to any funder deadline, but we would far rather hear from you as early as possible.

On this page

• How applications work at Cambridge

• Checking you are eligible

• Coming from outside Cambridge

• How long it takes

• Making an application

• Costing your project

• What the Department checks

• Ethics in Research

• Impact

• If you are successful

• Contact and further guidance

How applications work at Cambridge

Research grants at Cambridge are held by the University rather than by individuals. The University is the body the funder contracts with, and applications are submitted centrally by the Research Operations Office, which is the only office authorised to sign on the University's behalf.

The project itself, though, is yours. As Principal Investigator you design the research, you decide how the budget is spent, and you are responsible for delivering the work and managing the money within the sponsor's terms and conditions. The Department's job is to make that as straightforward as possible: we help you cost the application, check it against the sponsor's rules, ensure everything is fully complaint with the university's financial policy and procedures, and provide ongoing support once your research grant has been awarded.

The practical consequence is that an application cannot go to a funder without departmental and institutional approval, and neither can be done at short notice. 

Checking you are eligible

Three things need to be true at once, and it is worth checking all three before you invest too much of your time:

The funder's rules. Career stage, time since your PhD, nationality or residence, subject remit, and whether you may hold other awards at the same time. These are set out in the funder's own guidance.

The University's rules. To be named as Principal Investigator you need a contractual relationship with the University, normally a contract of employment. Your contract must cover the full life cycle of the grant, and – generally speaking –  your commitments across all of your projects cannot add up to more than 100% of your time. Registered students cannot hold a University-managed research grant, but they can apply for various funding opportunities from other sources. 

The Department's agreement. We need to be able to host the award, which means space, administrative support, and a mentor where the scheme requires one. This requires Executive Committee review and approval, and the SRGA can guide you through this process.

Some schemes are restricted, meaning Cambridge may only submit a limited number of applications and will run an internal competition to determine which applications to send forward – the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship as one example. Internal deadlines fall months before the funder's own deadlines. If you are unsure whether a scheme is subject to the restricted call procedure, please do not hesitate to ask. 

Coming from outside the University of Cambridge

Most fellowship schemes need a host department and a named mentor. Before approaching us about a specific scheme, you will need two things:

A member of our academic staff who has agreed to mentor or sponsor you. Finding and approaching them is your responsibility. Browse our academic staff and write to them directly with a brief summary of your proposal and your CV. Retired and emeritus academics are not able to act as mentors.

A project that fits our research strengths. Our research clusters are a good place to start.

Hosting an award commits the department to space, support and mentoring time, so we consider each request on its merits and acceptance of your proposal is not guaranteed. Furthermore, no employment contract is issued until an award is confirmed as successful. 

How long it takes

Work backwards from the funder's deadline rather than forwards from today. The funder deadline is only one deadline, and you must adhere to all internal reviews as well. Failure to do so may result in your application requiring Head of Department approval to be submitted without Research Office review. The significance of this is that if the SRGA identifies the scheme as requiring non-negotiable secondary expert review, your application could be rejected on the grounds of financial risk before it is even submitted to the funder. 

Six weeks is the minimum, not a target. Before this, there is not enough time to cost the project properly, obtain departmental approval, resolve any employment or immigration questions, and leave the Research Operations Office time to review your application. You must bear in mind that your application is highly unlikely to be the only one currently being reviewed in the department. If a call window is short due to no fault of your own, get in touch anyway and we will tell you honestly whether it can be done.

Making an application

Departmental approval starts with the Preliminary Form. Send it to research@socanth.cam.ac.uk together with a short project summary, your CV, and written confirmation of mentor support where a mentor is required.

Forms are considered by the Departmental Executive Committee during term time only. You will ordinarily hear the result of this review inside of five working days.

Costing your project

Once your Preliminary Form is approved, we will help cost the project with you in Worktribe – the University's costing system.

UK universities cost research on a full economic costing (fEC) basis. This includes the project's share of buildings, libraries, IT and support staff, not just its direct costs. Most funders pay only part of the total: research councils typically pay 80%, and many trusts pay direct costs only. The University meets the difference, which is why budgets are looked at carefully for any unreasonable financial liability.

A few costs are difficult or impossible to add later, so please raise them at this stage:

• Open access publishing charges, and whether your funder will pay them

• Visas and the immigration health surcharge for project staff

• Redundancy provision for fixed-term posts running beyond two years, where eligible

• VAT, including self-charge VAT on services bought from overseas

• Data storage and archiving for the period the funder requires after the project ends. The university encourages use of its Apollo repository which is managed by the Open Research Systems Team at Cambridge University Library.

• Collaborator exchange rates for overseas expenses paid in a foreign currency

Institutional details

Funders often ask for institutional information that individual applicants do not have to hand. Below are some of the common fields you'll be asked to fill out. 

What the Department checks

Departmental approval is a practical assessment of whether we can host the award and support the project.

Investigator time. Grants must include at least 10% investigator time across the project, covering the Principal Investigator and all Co-Investigators, with an additional 5% for each further member of project staff. This is departmental policy, but funding schemes may have their own investigator time policies that will supersede ours – the departmental investigator time policy is a bare minimum internal regulation. 

Teaching cover and space. If a significant share of an academic's time is bought out, their teaching still has to happen. And we need somewhere to put the people the grant employs. Any conflicts with teaching and other departmental / administrative responsibilities should be discussed with the Head of Department.

Contracts and dates. Start and end dates, anticipated breaks between contracts, grades of pay and adequate project support, and whether anyone on the team reaches retirement age during the duration of project.

International working. Tell us if the project involves working outside the UK for more than 90 days in any rolling twelve-month period, whether in one block or several trips to the same country. Beyond that threshold there are likely to be financial liabilities in the host country, and they are expensive to resolve after the event. See the University's global mobility guidance for further information. You may also contact the Global Mobility HR Team at globalmobility@admin.cam.ac.uk if you are unsure if your budget will need to factor in the cost of a global mobility allowance.

Partners. Where a project involves partner organisations, the University carries out background checks before we can commit. Depending on the geographical location of these partners, and whether or not we have a relationship with them already, these checks can take some time, so please be mindful of this. 

Data. Fieldwork in social anthropology very often involves personal data, and sometimes special category data under the UK GDPR. Think about what you will collect, how it will be stored, and how long the funder requires it to be kept, and tell us at the outline stage. You may also contact the Research Data Management team on info@data.cam.ac.uk if you would like to discuss ethical standards and guidelines of handling personal data in greater detail. 

Applications over £1 million. Where the total at fEC exceeds £1 million, including partner costs, the application also needs clearance at School level, and the paperwork must reach the School Office four weeks before the funder's deadline. Please flag anything of this size as early as you can.

What we cannot agree to

The Department cannot commit to:

• Employing anyone beyond the end of the life cycle of the grant. If a scheme requires a guarantee of continued employment after the grant ends, we will not be able to support it. 

• Matched funding or in-kind contributions that have not been agreed in advance and in writing. If a scheme requires the host institution to contribute, this needs discussing at the very start, because it may mean we cannot apply at all.

• Waiving or reducing overhead recovery to be "competitive", except where the funder's own terms require it and the Head of Department authorises it.

• Guaranteeing space, equipment or research facilities that have not been costed into the application.

• Absorbing costs ineligible under the terms of the Award, or losses caused by extreme exchange rate volatility, unrecoverable VAT, or overspending.

• Bridging salary between the end of one grant and the start of another.

• Spending before an award is confirmed and a finance code issued. Any expenditure incurred before or after the start and end date of an award, without prior approval from the funder, would be a disallowed cost at audit and a financial liability to the University. There can be exceptions to this rule in very specific circumstances, but it is generally not permitted. 

Ethics in research

All members of the department conducting research must apply for ethical approval from the Research Ethics Committee. The Research Operations Office website on Ethics in Research gives details of how ethical approval is managed within the University.

You are asked to read and sign an initial disclaimer at the preliminary application stage, stating that your research conforms to the ethical standards set out by the university, Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) and the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA).

See Ethics Approval for more information. 

Impact

We are able to offer various kinds of support including funding for projects that may have a potential impact beyond academia. Most internal impact funding here sits in the University's UKRI Impact Acceleration Accounts. The primary account for us is the Impact Starter Fund which runs on a rolling basis for projects of up to three months, covers AHRC and ESRC remits (and interdisciplinary work), and does not require you to hold existing UKRI funding. There's also the Public Engagement Starter Fund, which opens once a year.

Please contact the SRGA if you you might be interested to learn more. You may also browse the REF impact database for examples of previous projects seeded by Impact funds.

If you are successful

Let us know straight away, and send us the funder's award letter if you are successful. The Research Operations Office will set the award up on the University's Finance System (CUFS) and issue a project code. Nothing can be spent, ordered or committed to the project until that code exists.

If the project employs anyone, please contact the Departmental Administrator at da@socanth.cam.ac.uk as early as you can. Advertising, shortlisting, interviews, references and visa sponsorship can take time, and it's worth building this into your project plan rather than your start date.

Once the grant is running, managing it is your responsibility as Principal Investigator: staying within budget, spending in line with the funder's terms and University's Financial Regulations, and adhering to any reporting requirements. The Faculty Finance Team at FinanceMgr@hsps.cam.ac.uk will support you post-award. 

If your application is unsuccessful, please tell us anyway. Many successful applications are second attempts, and we can talk about potential resubmissions or alternative schemes.

Contact and further guidance

For anything to do with research funding, contact the School Research Grants Assistant at research@socanth.cam.ac.uk. It helps if you can tell us the funder and exact scheme name with a link to the scheme you are interested in, roughly what you want to do, and who your mentor is if you have one.

Further information about how to prepare an application, as well as information on how to cost your research, can be found on the ROO Website. The University’s Research Funding Development Team can provide support with developing your research proposal, as well as access to institutional funds to help enable preparation of large collaborative bids. Contact researchstrategy@admin.cam.ac.uk for further information.

After you have submitted your Preliminary Form, the School Research Grants Assistant will be in contact to let you know if the Executive Committee have approved your application to move forward. In the meantime, the department are here for you for any questions or queries, so please do not hesitate to contact us.

The SRGA is available for you in-person at the department as well, so please feel free to pop into the office or email your request for an in-person appointment. 

Finding funding

Cambridge Research Office –  central hub for research support

Research Professional –  funding database, free to Cambridge users

AHSS funding deadline calendar –  major arts, humanities and social science schemes

Postgraduate funding opportunities – a guide to the central funding schemes available

Related pages

Ethics approval

Visiting researchers

Postdoctoral affiliation

Departmental funding for our own students

_{🛈 This page was last updated by the School Research Grants Assistant (SRGA) Tuesday 08 September 2026.}