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Birkbeck’s Wellcome Trust Institutional Funding for Research Culture (IFRC)

Birkbeck was founded in 1823 on the principle of access to education for working people. As the only research-intensive institution in the UK that has specialised in widening participation from its outset, we attract doctoral and post-doctoral students from groups traditionally disadvantaged in higher education. But barriers, including historic exclusion from knowledge production, lack of access to debt-free finance, and the sense of not feeling at home in academic spaces often mean that for these groups, the journey from PhD is interrupted or impossible.

Our proposal reimagines Birkbeck’s mission of widening access and participation for the twenty first century, focusing on knowledge production and institutional wellbeing through the retention and recruitment of a diverse and inclusive staff base.

We have identified three key aims:

  1. developing a diverse academic workforce from the bottom up
  2. recruitment and retention of a diverse academic workforce from ECR to professor
  3. coproduction of knowledge in health research.

Working in collaboration with historically excluded groups and communities, we offer career development grants for health researchers alongside seed funding for participatory health research and research culture initiatives. We believe that these activities will help us develop and sustain an inclusive, ethical and creative research environment that supports the progression of colleagues from PGR to Professor.

Our IFRC activities build on the successes of our Wellcome/Birkbeck ISSF programmes. All activities must fall within the  scientific or medical humanities remit of the Wellcome Trust. 

Projects confirmed so far

Nothing About Us Without Us

Projects to develop proof of concept research with people and communities who are often the subject of life, health and wellbeing research, but rarely engaged in knowledge production all the way through from inception to dissemination.

  • Professor Eddy Davelaar, Professor of Psychology and Applied Neuroscience, School of Psychological Sciences.
    • Identifying priorities in dementia research with people living with dementia and carers: a Delphi consensus study and grant co-development.
  • Professor Esther Leslie, Professor of Political Aesthetics, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    • Health at the Crossroads: Towards a Research Repository of Strategies of Health Maintenance Through a Panoramic Investigation of Historical and Contemporary Practices, Experiences and Recollections of Health and Well-being in Somers Town across 250 years.

Faculty Seed Fund

Team science and/or interdisciplinary health research projects aimed at building a diverse, collaborative, creative, innovative research culture that is supportive of mental health and wellbeing.

  • Dr Joanna Farr, Lecturer, School of Psychological Sciences and Dr Aideen Foley, Reader in Environment and Society, School of Social Sciences.
    • IDEA - Initiating Dialogue on Eco-Anxiety. The project explores impacts of eco-anxiety on the Birkbeck community, including those who research environmental issues (especially early career researchers) and all staff who are concerned about the environment. By charting interactions between eco-anxiety and research culture, the project aims to support wellbeing and resilience in environmental research at Birkbeck, and amongst the wider Birkbeck community.

Salary extension schemes

  • Dr Eoin Fullam, School of Psychological Sciences. Chatbot Therapy: A Critical Analysis of AI Mental Health Treatment
  • Denise Cadete, School of Psychological Sciences. Flexible Representation of body parts and extra body parts and the physics of bodily perception
  • Helen Olawole-Scott, Psychological Sciences. Learning to trust our senses and hallucinations
  • Kiara Avitali Wickremasinghe, Historical Studies. 'Open to Opera': A pilot project combining operatic singing and storytelling for well-being in Colombo, Sri Lanka
  • Dr Georgina Donati, School of Psychological Sciences. Establishing a computer-based paradigm and physiological measurement of emotion regulation
  • Dr Alex Murray, Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR), School of Social Sciences. Diverse Disabilities: Accessibility and Justice in the Tribunal
  • Dr Jenni Robertson, School of Natural Sciences and School of Social Sciences. Earthquakes’ Hidden Health Aftershocks: Preparing and mitigating for post-earthquake infectious diseases informed by expert geological knowledge

For more information and to find out how to apply for a grant, please visit Birkbeck's Wellcome Trust Institutional Funding for Research Culture (IFRC) Sharepoint site (Birkbeck staff only).

For enquiries from outside of Birkbeck, please .