AHRC/HERA – Support Knowledge Exchange for European Humanities Research

Funding available to act as a Knowledge Exchange Facilitator (KEF) bringing together Humanities in the European Research Area funded projects on the theme of Crisis.

This Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) opportunity offers funding to act as a Knowledge Exchange Facilitator (KEF) bringing together Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) funded projects on the theme of Crisis and set the theme within the context of values of the humanities, by developing knowledge exchange activities.

Funding is administered by AHRC on behalf of the HERA Network.

The KEF’s role is to strengthen the overall cohesion of the HERA Crisis joint research programme and coordinate knowledge exchange efforts and activities at the programme level including organising kick off and closing programme conferences.

The KEF will coordinate knowledge exchange efforts and activities by:

• Inspiring and encouraging the various teams of the research projects into using new, effective ways of reaching out and knowledge uptake, and to stimulate the exchange of good examples to facilitate best practice building on existing HERA guidance and EU guidance.
• Develop capacity building and mentoring opportunities for early career researchers.
• Stimulating and facilitating knowledge exchange between the various teams of the research projects both within academia and non-academic stakeholders. This will include engaging stakeholders in events where appropriate. Stakeholders include, for example:
  • Related professional organisations in government.
  • Policy makers.
  • Industry.
  • The voluntary sector.
  • The wider general public.
• Encouraging the highest quality of outputs from the research both in terms of outputs targeting academia (for example, scholarly articles in appropriate or highly regarded peer-reviewed journals, and monographs) and non-academic stakeholders (for example, policy briefs, non-technical summaries and podcasts) to enhance the visibility of humanities-led research.

A budget will be provided to the KEF to organise a kick off conference at the end of 2025 and end of programme conference in 2028 for the HERA Crisis awards.

The conferences would have a broader focus than just the HERA Crisis joint research programme to ensure it is of value to the debate on the merits of the humanities and strengthen the transnational collaboration of the whole HERA network.

The conferences should focus on European humanities collaboration, advocacy, networking and supporting the development of the EU Partnerships. The budget would cover conference logistics and costs to reimburse project teams and HERA network board members for attendance.

The fixed duration of this award is three and a half years and the project must start by 6 January 2025.