COVID-19 Recovery: Building future pandemic preparedness and understanding citizen engagement in the USA and UK

Deadline: 6 October 2021

UK and US-based researchers at any career stage, and active in any discipline within the humanities and social sciences are invited to submit proposals focused on UK-US vaccine engagement, including examples of community confidence and hesitancy. Funded by the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Aims
COVID-19 is the most serious health crisis we have faced for decades, but its challenges are not new. There are lessons we can learn from history and recent experience, and evidence from the social sciences and humanities will be critical to our recovery and how we can shape a positive future.

The aim of this call is to facilitate transatlantic learning about the contexts, causes and factors leading to vaccine engagement by supporting research within the UK and USA. Applications on these issues must demonstrate a dedicated focus on place and context at local and community levels, and indicate how they would incorporate a transatlantic view on the issues and questions. This call follows a forthcoming initial pilot study and aims to scale that work further, building an evidence base allowing us to answer:

• How does context specific to place, culture, social, political and economic factors shape people’s responses to vaccines?
• How can we harness existing knowledge to develop, disseminate and employ community-engaged research which works for and with national and regional public health authorities and community actors and researchers, before, during, and after vaccine deployment programmes?

Eligibility
The lead applicant must be a researcher from the humanities or social sciences and be based at an eligible UK university or research institute. The lead applicant must be of postdoctoral status or above. Projects can involve up to three Co-Applicants. Collaboration between researchers in different institutions is encouraged and we expect to see Co-Applicants based in both the UK and the USA. 

Value and duration
Awards of five months in duration and up to £100,000 are available. Funding can be used to support the time of the Principal Investigator and Co-Applicants; research assistance; travel, fieldwork and related expenses; and networking costs. Awards are offered on an 80 per cent full economic costing basis. Projects must begin on 27 October 2021.

Application process 
Applications must be submitted online using the British Academy's Grant Management System (GMS), Flexi-Grant®. The deadline for submissions and UK institutional approval is on 6 October 2021, 17:00, UK time.