This document outlines the key features and requirements for large grant proposals exploring the relationship between past, present, and future through the AHRC's "Care for the Future" theme. Proposals should be collaborative, ambitious in scale, and have the potential to make significant contributions to interdisciplinary research questions. They must engage partners outside of higher education and have strategies for knowledge exchange, public engagement, and developing early career researchers. Successful proposals will receive between £1-2 million and act as leaders and representatives within the theme.

1. Care for the Future: Thinking
Forward Through the Past
Details of Large Theme Grants
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. Key Features of Theme Large Grants:
Open Call
• Open to anyone eligible for AHRC funding
• No need to have had any prior involvement
with the Theme.
• Wide temporal horizons – past and future
• Maximum one application per PI
• Any topic relevant to the theme but not
looking to add substantially to the
environmental change and sustainability
portfolio through this call.

3. • Scale and ambition beyond a standard
AHRC grant
• Transformative potential within a
relevant theme area
• Sum of the whole must be more than
the parts
• Potential to make a significant
contribution to bigger cross-cutting
questions, issues, sub-themes
• Opportunity to develop genuinely
inter-disciplinary approaches
• Looking for innovation, opportunity
for ‘risk’ taking within the overall
research project
Key Features of Theme Large Grants
Research Collaboration and Ambition

4. Key Features of Theme Large Grants:
Collaboration
• Applications should be collaborative across all three
of the following dimensions:
- across research organisations;
- across disciplines in the arts and humanities (and
beyond if appropriate);
- with partners outside the higher education
sector
• Explore potential to make a distinctive contribution
to knowledge exchange, public policy and/or public
engagement and to think in creative ways about
pathways to impact drawing across a broader
portfolio of research and contacts.

5. International Collaboration
• International collaboration is strongly encouraged
where appropriate
• International Co-Investigators may be included and
costed in to project at 100%
• If including International co-investigators the total
direct costs for should be no more than 30% of the
fEC of the proposal and they must be from eligible
institution and of Post doctoral standing.
• Alternately international costs may be requested as
before (e.g. T&S costs, consultancies, etc)

6. Key Features of Theme Large Grants:
Acting as Beacons for the Theme (1)
• Proposals should be framed in the light of the
Theme description and clearly demonstrate
how they will contribute to the broader aims
of the Theme.
• Consider how they can contribute to building
communities of scholars around the Theme’s
central challenges or concerns
• Shoehorning existing research project ideas
into the theme won’t work!

7. Key Features of Theme Large Grants:
Acting as Beacons for the Theme (2)
The Theme large grants will:
• need to work with each other & work closely with Theme
Leadership Fellows and with AHRC.
• be encouraged to think creativity about themselves as key
‘nodes’ within the Theme and their role with the broader
‘Thematic’ research community
• play an important role in representing and exemplifying the
Theme (Theme ‘beacons’)
• be expected to play a key role in Theme-level activities
• support Theme level engagement activities with non-HEI
stakeholders
• need to be flexible to respond to emerging Theme agendas

8. Key Features of Theme Large Grants:
Building Research Capabilities
• Think about the legacy in terms of the longer-term
development of the research field e.g. through
providing opportunities for the next generation of
researchers to engage with the Theme.
• Can include up to 3 project studentships but
consideration should also be given to support for post-
doctoral research assistants and other ECRs on the
project.
• Also think more widely beyond those funded through
the project in terms of wider academic networking and
engagement activities, links to institutional training
activities, BGPs etc

9. Other Issues:
Grant Leadership and Management
• Careful attention should be given to issues of
intellectual leadership and project management given
the ambitious nature of these grants and wide range of
objectives.
• Time commitments and leadership / management
structure should be commensurate with the scale and
ambition of the grants and their roles within the Theme
• Roles should be clearly identified and if necessary
specialist support for project co-ordination/ activities/
delivery may be included if appropriate.

10. Other Issues:
Institutional Support
• As these are major strategic objectives we will be
looking for alignment with strategies within, and/or
support from, the research organisations.
• This may be particularly important in, for example,
securing the longer term legacy of the grant and in
supporting building wider research capabilities and
collaborations.

11. Assessment Criteria
We will be looking for outlines to show clear potential in terms of:
•Quality, innovation and transformative research
•Leaving a sustainable legacy including developing skills &
expertise
•Fit to the call and contribution to Care for the Future Theme
•Depth and breadth of expertise across arts and humanities (and
beyond if appropriate)
•Boundary-crossing interactions (e.g. disciplinary, conceptual,
methodological, theoretical, sectoral, temporal, international)
•External engagement, knowledge exchange, pathways to impact
•Effective project leadership, management and integration
•Institutional support
•Collaboration with others in the Theme
•Value for money

12. Further Information on the Call:
Funding Available
• Applications must be for between £1m and
£2m (fEC)
• They should be for durations of 36 - 60
months
• Grants to start between September 2014 and
April 2015.
• We expect to fund 2-4 Care for the Future
large grants through this call subject to quality

13. Further Information on the Call:
Timetable
• May 2013 call launch (forms available in JeS from 5
June)
• 10 October 2013 (1600hrs) closing date for outline
proposals
• December – notification of shortlisting outcomes
• March 2014 – closing date for full applications
• May/June 2014 – interviews with shortlisted applicants
• June 2014 – Notification of funding outcomes
• September 2014 – April 2015 - Large Grants start

14. Further Information on the Call:
Submission of Proposals
• Submission through JeS
• Only outline costings required
• 4 page case for support and cvs
• Recognised that proposals will develop significant
between outline and full stage, but outlines must clearly
demonstrate their potential in a highly competitive
environment.
• Please make sure you allow time for your institution to
submit your application to AHRC ahead of the deadline
of 1600hrs on 10 October and try to avoid leaving it to
the last minute!

15. Other Funding Opportunities
• Competition for Theme large Grants is likely to be stiff – only
those that fully meet the aims of the call will stand a chance.
Other types of research project should be directed towards
other funding routes.
• Large Grants are a core part of themes but only part of the
picture – we are considering other activities e.g. partnership
activities, targeted calls in under-represented areas and
highlight notices, which could complement the large grants.
• Responsive mode grants, fellowships and networking schemes –
potential to link into the theme. Open Deadlines
• 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 are expected.

16. Questions?
Contacts for further queries in Team C
Hattie Allsop (h.allsop@ahrc.ac.uk, tel: 01793
416038) or
Natalia Rowlands (n.rowlands@ahrc.ac.uk tel:
01793 416030) or
Susan Hanshaw (s.hanshaw@ahrc.ac.uk tel:
01793 416063)