STREAMS

This grants scheme funds impact activities, including public engagement activities. Impact activities are unevenly supported across UK Higher Education Institutions, and across types of socio-legal scholarship. In recognition of this, this scheme is designed to provide support for impact activity conducted by SLSA members that would not otherwise be supported through institutions. Supporting such impact activities will also enable the SLSA Board to have a clearer understanding of impactful outcomes of socio-legal research, and will help us to make the case for our discipline to research funders, policymakers and others. For the purposes of this scheme, ‘impact’ will be defined to correspond closely with the definition of impact for REF purposes. Public engagement activities will be recognised as being eligible for funding, given their importance in developing pathways to impact in academic research. Impact was defined for the purposes of REF2021, as follows: 'Impact includes, but is not limited to, an effect on, change or benefit to: the activity, attitude, awareness, behaviour, capacity, opportunity, performance, policy, practice, process or understanding of an audience, beneficiary, community, constituency, organisation or individuals in any geographic location whether locally, regionally, nationally or internationally. Impact includes the reduction or prevention of harm, risk, cost or other negative effects. ... Impacts on students, teaching or other activities in HEIs are also included.

The maximum award under this scheme is £4000. The application must be costed in pounds sterling, and any award will be by bank transfer in sterling to the applicant's institution. Unspent funds must be returned to the SLSA at the end of the award period.

Applicants to the scheme must be current members in good standing of the Socio-Legal Studies Association, wherever they live, on 31 October in the year of the application. This means they must be fully paid-up members (or registered as free student members) of the SLSA. Priority will be given to SLSA members without access to other funding sources for the impact-related activity applied for. Joint applications are encouraged, especially where permanent academic staff partner with precarious or unaffiliated researchers, but all applicants must meet the above eligibility criteria. Joint applications must specify the lead applicant. If applicants are employed in different institutions, payment will be made to the lead applicant’s institution. No member will receive more than one grant per year. Members of the SLSA Board are excluded from applying for the duration of their tenure on the Board.

The types of activities this fund could cover include: follow-on funding, ie translating outcomes from research projects into tools/activities that will lead to impact producing policy briefs/reports producing podcasts and other media public engagement events developing relationships with non-academic partners, for example placements and associated travel/accommodation costs co-production, for example payments for non-academic participants offering training, for example to third-sector organisations childcare costs for ‘out-of-hours’ impact activities, ie additional care costs that would directly arise from the proposed activity included in this grant application administrative assistance to support impact activities. It is the responsibility of the applicant to cost their proposal clearly and precisely (or as best as possible).Costing particulars should have specific headings for all parts of the claim.

The Impact Grant Scheme covers costs for impact activities only, which excludes, inter alia: costs for teaching buy-out institutional overheads activities that otherwise fall within the SLSA Seminar, Fieldwork, Research Grant or International Collaboration schemes.

In making awards the SLSA Board shall consider: clarity of the aim(s) and objective(s) of the activity reach and significance of the proposed impact partners identified and clarity of proposed activity/partnerships value for money and realistic budget.

Applications open on the last Monday in June each year. Applications close on 31 October each year. Successful applicants contacted and unsuccessful applicants notified in early February each year. Successful applicants must submit a 200-word summary of their project to the Socio-Legal Newsletter by the third Monday in May in the year of the award. Successful applicants must comply with the end of project reporting requirements by 30 September in the year after they receive the award.

You can apply for this scheme via the members section of the website. You will need have an active subscription to be able to access the form. A voluntary statement disclosing that one or more of the applicants is employed on a precarious (non-permanent) basis or is not currently employed by an HEI may also be included. Including this voluntary disclosure will not impact your chances of being awarded funding but will help us to target extra funding to precariously employed members. In 2024 we published an article in the Socio-Legal Newsletter providing advice on writing a strong application: 'SLSA Funding Schemes: how to write a successful application'.

On completion of their research no later than 30 September in the year after they receive the award – except in special circumstances and with the agreement of the Newsletter Editor and/or Chair of the Research Grants Committee – recipients must submit a final report (max 350 words) for publication in the Socio-Legal Newsletter; OR contribute a blog to the SLSA Blog (max 1000 words); OR submit a video for the SLSA YouTube channel. Applicants should liaise with the Grants Subcommittee Chair and the Newsletter Editor about their reporting choice. If the above condition is not fulfilled (ie the applicant does not provide a report on the project), then the SLSA will approach the applicant’s institution to seek a refund of the award. Furthermore, the applicant will be barred from applying for future grants until the report is provided. The Grant Scheme Reporting Guidance 2025 explains how to write your project summary and final report for publication in the Socio-Legal Newsletter and alternatives to disseminating your findings to SLSA colleagues.

Applications will assessed by the Impact Grants Committee which will make recommendations to the SLSA Board. If, in the opinion of the Impact Grants Committee, there are insufficient quality applications to justify allocating the full sum available in the fund, then the Committee will make only such awards as it considers appropriate. If a conflict of interest arises, the relevant member of the Impact Grants Committee will not participate in the decision about that application. The Impact Grants Committee will make an annual report to the Board about the number and quality of applications for awards and the awards actually made. A summary of the Annual Report will be published in the Socio-Legal Newsletter.

Recipients will be required to acknowledge the fact of the award in any activities or publication which stems from the award.

Upon submission of your application, you will be asked to fill in a voluntary and confidential EDI monitoring form, which will not be connected to, or have any bearing on, your application. Providing this information helps the SLSA monitor and progress EDI issues.

Each applicant should contact their Head of Department, Research Director or other appropriate officer well in advance of the application deadline for the purpose of completing the Endorsement Form and/or providing letters of support.

The data supplied to the SLSA on these forms will be used solely for the purposes of processing your grant application, informing you of the outcome, and making any relevant payments. The names, institutional affiliation, amount awarded, and title of project, of successful applicants will be recorded on our website. We will also check the SLSA membership database for your current membership status. Our legitimate basis for processing your data under article 6 of GDPR is the performance of a contract. Any queries or data access requests should be addressed to admin@slsa.ac.ukin the first instance.