IAS Major Projects and Fellowships

The IAS supports, promotes and grows new and creative interdisciplinary ideas that transform our perspectives in challenging and provocative ways. We provide time, space, and resources to exchange and integrate ideas, knowledge and skills. We are a home to an inclusive, diverse and supportive community of scholars from Durham University and across the world.   

The call for 2028/29 Major Projects is now open. We are inviting applications for Major Projects which should be genuinely interdisciplinary, innovative and ambitious. We encourage projects that have the potential to build towards research of the scale and ambition suited to large programme or centre type funding. Projects may be led by up to two PIs (in two different faculties) with a wider team ideally involving collaboration across a broad range of disciplines.  

MAJOR PROJECTS (to run in academic year 2028/29) 

These will be ambitious projects working across at multiple disciplines and across faculty boundaries. Successful projects will be supported with: 

• Up to two Durham Academic PIs awarded Christopherson-Knott Fellowships to buy out their time for one term to work on the project.
  
  
• Up to two high quality external IAS Fellows to visit Durham for a period of one term to work on the project during the project term.  
  
  
• Financial support of up to £3500 for research activities during the project year 2028/29. 
  
  
• Financial support to build activities in the year running up to the project term (2027/28). 
  
  
• Further financial support to continue the momentum of the work from the project term in the following year (2029/30). 
  
  
• Access to the facilities and resources of the IAS. 

APPLICATIONS 

An initial brief project outline/expression of interest should be submitted to the IAS by midday GMT Thursday 14 January 2027 using this online form.   

All applicants (PIs) will be invited to the IAS on either Tuesday 19, Wednesday 20 or Thursday 21 January 2027 (see schedule in the above online form for date preferences) to briefly discuss their project and ideas with the IAS Directorate. This pitch affords the opportunity for the IAS to give guidance and feedback, to both fully formed or early stage ideas,  based on the potential of the project. Whilst any project can choose to go forward to full application, we hope the pitch and feedback save time and effort where other opportunities might be better suited to the project plans.  

Please be aware that Previous Major Project Investigators are ineligible to apply within five years (of their award), though they remain able to be part of the wider research team on a project. 

If the application goes forward, the date for full project application is midday GMT Thursday 18 March 2027.  The full application process will use an online application form (open from 25 January 2027) and will require much more detailed information than the earlier January Expression of Interest submission and applicants will also, in addition to providing more detailed information about themselves such as a CV, be asked submit Fellowship nominations (including the submission of nominee CVs). In addition, the full application require you to outline how the project benefits from an interdisciplinary approach, provide a detailed project description (2 pages), outline the wider research team, and include budgetary details. 

All applications will be selected based on the following criteria (these are equally weighted): 

• Novelty and ambition: to what extent does the project open new perspectives and create new inter-disciplinary synergies? 
• Rigour: to what extent does the project employ appropriate and state-of-the-art concepts and methods, and/or develop promising new ones?  
• Clarity and quality of objectives: how clear and realistic are the intended outcomes; what impact will there be on Durham University’s research capacity and international competitiveness; how well does it fit with University and Department research strategies?
• Quality of the proposed research team: track record relative to career stage, including notable publications, awards, prizes and other esteem indicators, complementarity and suitability to the project objectives of team members’ expertise, evidence of interest in interdisciplinary perspectives; in the case of the PIs, evidence of intellectual leadership/leadership potential. 

Decisions about the project will be relayed to all applicants by 14 April 2027, after the Fellowship nominations for successful applications will be taken to the next stage and the IAS will seek, from you, references for your Fellowship nominees. Further details about the application and nomination process and online forms are noted below.  The deadline for the submission of Fellowship references is midday 14 May 2027.

ONLINE FORMS, GUIDANCE AND APPLICATION DEADLINES   

Guidance documents

ADDITIONAL

Colleagues interested in developing project applications are encouraged to contact their Faculty Co-Director with any questions they may have:

• Professor Alex Easton (alexander.easton@durham.ac.uk) IAS Director (Science)
  
  
• Professor Gretchen Larsen, Co-Director, Business (gretchen.larsen@durham.ac.uk)
  
  
• Professor Nayanika Mookherjee, Co-Director, Social Sciences (nayanika.mookherjee@durham.ac.uk)
  
  
• Professor Noam Lesham, Co-Director, (noam.lesham@durham.ac.uk)
  
  
• Professor Patrick Zuk, Co-Director, Arts & Humanities (patrick.zuk@durham.ac.uk)
  
  

Enquiries can also be made to the IAS Manager, Linda Crowe (ias.manager@durham.ac.uk).