1. Welcome to AHRC’s
Care for the Future: Thinking
Forward Through the Past
Large Theme Grants
Town Meeting
exploring the dynamic relationship that
exists between past, present and future,
and how they interact with and shape
each other, through a temporally inflected
lens ..........

2. Timetable for the Day
9.30am Registration/coffee
10.00am Welcome and introduction to
AHRC’s Strategic Themes (Gary
Grubb)
10.20–10.50am The Care for the Future Theme –
overview, aims, role of large
grants and future plans (Professor
Andrew Thompson, Theme Leadership
Fellow)
10.50–11.20am The Large Grants Call (Gary Grubb)
11.20-12.30pm Discussion / Question and Answer
Session
12.30-2.00pm Networking Lunch & Informal
Discussions and Questions

3. Background to AHRC’s Themes
Gary Grubb
Associate Director of Programmes
AHRC
G.Grubb@ahrc.ac.uk

4. AHRC Themes: Background
• ‘Future Directions’ consultation with
researchers (Feb-May 2009)
• Advisory Board analysis of outcomes
• Further consultation with key partners &
Subject Associations & via HEI visits
• Development by Advisory Board &
Council
• Themes further shaped and refined by
Theme Advisory Groups (on-going
process) & Town Meetings & workshops
in 2012
• Building on the successes of previous
AHRC ‘strategic programmes’ but
different in nature

5. • Digital Transformations
• Translating Cultures
• Care for the Future
• Science in Culture
• Connected Communities (with
other RCs)
AHRC’s Themes

6. AHRC Strategy 2013-2018
• Support for larger scale research
collaborations involving multiple
researchers and institutions and
supporting inter-disciplinary
research
• Building new communities of
researchers and new kinds of
research leadership
• Ask questions that cannot be
tackled by single disciplines alone
• Setting research in wider contexts
and pursuing broader objectives

7. Collective Aims of the Themes
• To support the development of research capability and
communities in emerging research areas identified by Arts and
Humanities researchers as being of increasing importance
• To provide research development opportunities across a range of
Arts and Humanities subject areas
• To support high quality, ambitious, cutting edge research,
creativity, innovation and intellectual leadership
• To stimulate boundary-crossing collaborations and partnerships
• To develop distinctive arts and humanities approaches that can
contribute to broader RCUK / cross-disciplinary programmes
• To provide a focal point for developing pathways and narratives
for the impact of arts and humanities research

8. Theme Working
• Themes not the same as AHRC strategic programmes
• Collection of adaptable theme activities
• Potential to draw in activities across all AHRC funding
modes (including responsive) , not just activities under
themed calls
• Developing flexibility as appropriate for each theme
• Consideration of international, knowledge exchange,
capacity building and public policy potential
• Emphasis on using current funding mechanisms and on
targeted activities, including building larger consortia
grants and partnership activities; flexibility rather than
large-scale new research programmes (‘variable
geometry’) 8

9. Theme Evolution: 2012-18
• Themes are diverse in nature
• Different funding and support patterns appropriate over future
years
• Represent a longer-term investment in the intellectual landscape
across the period of AHRC’s new Strategy for 2013-2018
• Themes will continue to link to, build on and complement the
majority of AHRC funded research through ‘responsive mode’ and
seek to add value to the range of research undertaken,
engagements within, across and outside the academic
communities supported by AHRC
• Themes can help to develop overarching narratives about
evolution of arts and humanities research but remain
underpinned by high quality researcher-led projects

10. Theme Funding
• Started with fairly open highlight notices & development awards
to stimulate community-generated ideas, interest & capacity
• Theme Leadership Fellowships to provide leadership and support
connectivity across activities
• Larger theme awards only one key part of theme activities – 3
themes had large grants calls in 2012. Care for the Future’s large
grants call in 2013.
• Consideration of complementary international (e.g.EU JPI on
Cultural Heritage), knowledge exchange, capacity building (e.g.
via skills development calls) and public policy potential
• Potential for partnership activities e.g. current partnership with
HLF to support community-based activities related to the
centenary of the First World War.
• Other calls (e.g. for smaller development awards in under-
represented or emerging areas). Continuing potential to draw in
new 'responsive mode’ activities 10

11. Care for the Future Theme Awards
• 16 exploratory awards underway in 2013
• Over 10 awards through Research networking
and fellowships highlight notices
• 10 grants shortly to be announced under the
Care for the Future: Environmental Change
and Sustainability Research Grants highlight
• Related activities under Connected
Communities, Researching Environmental
Change and Heritage areas

12. Theme / Connected Communities
Leadership Fellowships
• To enrich the intellectual agenda for the theme /programme
• To take a lead in engaging with broader research communities (UK
and overseas)
• To promote collaboration between projects and across
disciplinary, institutional and other boundaries
• To take on an advocacy role and develop narratives about the
progress of the theme
• To undertake an advisory role – working closely with the theme
advisory groups and AHRC staff / theme leads
• To stimulate and support the development of collaborative, KE,
public engagement and partnership activities beyond academia
• Undertake their own research relevant to the theme

13. Other Funding Opportunities
• Large Grants and Fellowships a core part of themes but only part
of the picture – we are thinking about other complementary
activities e.g. international calls, partnership activities, targeted
calls in under-represented areas and highlight notices which could
supplement the large grants as appropriate.
• Responsive mode grants, fellowships and networking schemes –
potential to link into the theme. Open Deadlines
• Connected Communities/ Care for the Future / HLF Co-ordinating
Centres for Community Research and Engagement to
Commemorate the Centenary of the First World War, closing date
16 July 2013
• We are planning a workshop for early career researchers in
December 2013/ January 2014 with follow-up funding. Call for
participants expected in autumn 2013
• Other calls e.g. international collaborations under JPI for Cultural
Heritage expected.

14. Why Include Provision for Theme
Large Grants?
• Allow for more ambitious collaborative projects and potential for
developing a wider range of collaborations and partnership –
across institutions, across disciplines, across sectors and
internationally e.g. potential ‘beacons’ for the themes, and for
international and partner collaborations.
• Offering enhanced capability building opportunities (e.g. building
new communities of scholars, linked students, longer contracts,
development of training programmes)
• Greater opportunity to seek leveraged funding (inside and
beyond institutions) & develop sustainable legacies
• Potential to build in more agility to respond to changing needs
and new research findings that emerge over time, working more
closely with AHRC
• Complement other smaller funding opportunities already offered
under the Themes and available from other funding sources

15. Theme Large Grants
• Ambitious, transformative potential within the field
• Sum of the whole must be more than the parts
• Potential to make a significant contribution to some of the
bigger cross-cutting questions, issues, sub-themes
• Extending and developing new collaborations across
institutions and disciplines – potential for developing
genuinely inter-disciplinary approaches
• Looking for innovation, opportunity for ‘risk’ taking within the
overall research programme
• Potential to think in creative ways about pathways to impact
drawing across a broader portfolio of research and contacts
• Opportunity to think about broader contributions and
collaborations, e.g. international, capability development etc