Horizons Connect Fund

The Connect Fund offers awards of up to £4,000 to research-focused colleagues to facilitate the exploration and development of partnerships that have the potential to develop bold, equitable and needs-based research. In doing so we recognise:

• The value that structured early-stage conversations bring to support the sustainable development of successful partnerships.
• The need to identify shared ways of working, priorities and agendas, and to understand early-on in the partnership where those priorities, agendas or approaches may be conflicting.
• That in the context of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects, additional time is required to establish shared language and understanding in the co-development of ideas.

At this stage, the fund is open to third-sector focused partnerships only and is being advertised internally (though external co-leads are required). We expect to fund between four and seven projects.

Applications do not need to demonstrate alignment with a specific funding call but should show why the partnership could be beneficial to addressing challenges identified by the partner organisation.

Whilst we do not anticipate all explorative partnerships will continue beyond the funding, we do expect that learning from the process should positively influence both parties involved in terms of how they develop equitable and transdisciplinary partnerships in the future.

This first-round of the Connect Fund will also act as a pilot to help us understand what support is needed to develop successful transdisciplinary partnerships.

As per the Horizons Institute’s Inclusion strategy, applicants must ensure that principles of EDI are embedded in their application. We are particularly interested in partnerships:

• with organisations working on issues that affect the most minoritised in society
• that actively seek out minoritized and smaller, grassroots networks, recognising the additional support these groups may need to navigate academic collaboration
• with organisations that themselves have diverse and inclusive leadership models.

The Horizons Institute supports the University’s Equality and Inclusion Framework and encourages applications from groups currently under-represented in Academic and Professional Service and Support Staff roles at Leeds. These include Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, and disabled candidates.

A Horizons Research Manager will be matched with each successful partnership group to provide guidance, identify opportunities, and support plans for future development. Grantees will need to complete the Horizons Evaluation Survey and attend two short meetings, one at the start and end of their engagement. We may also invite you to take part in other related activities as projects progress.

For the purposes of fund management, applications must be led by a University of Leeds academic colleague, employed on an ongoing academic contract for the duration of the project. The application must be co-developed with at least one co-lead from another faculty/service and another from the partner organisation(s).

The scheme is designed to include research-focused colleagues at all career stages. PGRs and research support staff can be included as co-leads. To support their development, all project proposals involving PGRs should consider their professional development needs, which can include personal development costs of up to £300 within the overall budget.

We are particularly interested to hear from colleagues who have not engaged with third-sector partnership working before, and for whom this opportunity would provide a space for development.

Partner organisations may be of any size, though your application should demonstrate the capacity they have to develop a potential partnership. They may be based locally, nationally or internationally. Horizons uses the NCVO’s six common features to define what qualifies as a third sector organisation.

This scheme is open to those wishing to explore new partnerships with organisations they have not formally worked with before. Although ideas about what the group will work on may not yet be fully formed, an outline of potential shared areas of research interest should be provided.

If your partnership is more developed than this, you might like to consider one of the other partnership-focused schemes currently available at the University.