Better Together
In September 2023, the UK Government reached a deal to re-associate to Horizon Europe and Copernicus programmes. This was met with great relief from the academic community with the new agreement giving certainty to UK research teams about their status and their access to the world’s largest collaborative research and innovation program.
The University of Leeds has a strong track-record for success in accessing European Union (EU) funding — ranked in the top 40 globally for participation in the previous programme, Horizon 2020 — and the EU funding team have continued to support Leeds academics throughout the recent period of uncertainty.
In this blog, Head of EU Funding Ben Williams and Horizons Institute Research Manager Kate Kellett consider the impact that these new opportunities might have on research development strategies and reflect on how we can work together to prepare competitive research proposals through the development of research networks and support for early-stage interdisciplinary ideas.
New opportunities
Horizon Europe provides unparalleled opportunities for research and innovation development. Established funding streams cover the full research and innovation lifecycle through a mixture of fellowships and collaborations with both policy- and researcher-led opportunities. Its unique position as a continental-level funding scheme provides access to key partners and even facilitates collaboration on a global scale.
As the UK begins to rebuild its position within the programme, it is important to consider how best to utilise the prospects available. This current iteration of EU Funding runs until 2027, which means there will now be several rounds of opportunity where UK researchers can not only access Horizon Europe funding but, importantly, will be eligible to lead EU-funded research consortia.
Horizon Europe is a €95.5 billion pot divided into three “Pillars”. An Excellence pillar funds researcher-led projects through fellowships, notably the prestigious ERC and Marie-Sklodowska-Curie schemes. PhD cohorts are funded through Doctoral Networks. The Innovation pillar encourages disruptive technology and aims to create routes to market. €53.5billion is allocated to the Global Challenge pillar, which is the main source of collaborative projects.
The failure to associate to Horizon Europe in a timely manner has seen a 50 per cent reduction in UK engagement as a whole, with around a 40 per cent reduction at Leeds. The cloud of uncertainty is only just lifting, with collaborators across Europe only recently regaining confidence that the UK’s participation will not be a hindrance to running a successful project.
Building connections
There is now pressure to demonstrate to the Government that the UK research and innovation community has the appetite to access Horizon Europe. The challenge for Leeds, and the UK in general, is to get activity back to original levels and ensure there are no delays in associating to the next Framework Programme that will start in 2028.
Fortunately, Leeds has a dedicated EU Team within the Research and Innovation Service (RIS) who provide substantial support to Horizon Europe applications and whose strategy includes actions to maximise engagement through first-time applicants and promoting a wider range of funding schemes.
Funding for Global Challenge collaborations is through 6 themes. A set of key areas, termed Destinations, are broken down into specific topics to which consortia can apply. These are determined by EU policy, societal or industrial need, and projects can range in size from €1.5million up to more than €20 million. The nature of each topic is that it cannot be solved by a single discipline alone. Multi-disciplinary research is the norm, the strength being a combination of international cultures as well as disciplines, that frequently include STEM and non-STEM components.
Proposals need to think about longer-term impact and how the results generated can be used to solve societal and industrial problems. Consequently, consortia are usually inter-sectoral with partners from industry, local government, CSOs and other end users and stakeholders ensuring the uptake is relevant, realistic and achievable. Horizon Europe has also seen the introduction of five ‘Missions’, a less prescriptive approach which has more ambitious longer-term challenges that give more control over the research to the consortia who apply.
This multi-disciplinary and intersectoral nature means that research networks are vital to success. This is, however, one of the most intimidating aspects of developing a proposal — especially for early career researchers. Add to this the oft-perpetuated wisdom that ‘all calls are won by those who developed the topics’ and ‘only those who have been funded before have a realistic chance of success’; and the task seems all the more daunting.
Although previous success and contributing to future priorities can be advantageous, and many networks enjoy repeated awards, the sheer number of topics means there will always be new consortia finding success. This is in fact a Commission objective — getting more first-time applicants involved in the programme.
Networks for collaboration
At the Horizons Institute, as part of our research development programme, we actively build research networks as a mechanism to drive forward research agendas and define, scope and understand research questions from a range of different perspectives. Building these interdisciplinary research networks, however, is not easy.
Developing an understanding of context, enabling communication through shared language, and defining goals across different disciplines is essential and takes time and persistence from everyone involved. This can be difficult when time is a limited, a common issue in the current academic environment.
We are attempting to navigate this by implementing strategies to help researchers find time to invest in novel approaches and provide opportunities to interact across disciplines, across institutions and across sectors. You can read more about our initiatives which include our Global Academy Programme, our Interdisciplinary Challenge Networks, and our Partnerships for Societal Impact.
The common theme that runs through all our strands of activity is how important it is to identify shared values and find commonalities, whilst understanding any differences, to build sustainable and successful partnerships. Alongside some financial support, we are recognising huge value in connecting like-minded academics and providing expert facilitation to explore, understand and support the development of interdisciplinary partnerships through the crucial initial phases.
By equipping our academics with the knowledge and understanding to bring their expertise together, we can spark the generation of new ideas and develop projects that place our researchers at the forefront of interdisciplinary challenge-led research.
We are now seeing though our recently graduated Challenge Networks that there is enormous potential to be involved with, and even lead on, major global initiatives with the resource and capacity that interdisciplinary research networks can bring — for example the WUN Mental Health Symposium hosted by Leeds Interdisciplinary Mental Health Research Network this summer.
The challenge for our developing networks and partnerships is extending their reach and scope and building both internal and external partnerships that provide new avenues and development opportunities.
Looking to the future
As we start to encourage academics to consider applications for Horizon Europe funding, we need to build effective support not only for project development but also for network development.
This requires a joined-up approach from the institutional teams that enable research development and requires us, as research enablers, to develop an understanding of the roles of different teams in this process. It also suggests we have a role to play in maintaining and growing our own networks, to help us understand different approaches and share best-practice amongst ourselves, in much the same way as we encourage the academics we work with to do.
At the Horizon Institute we welcome the opportunity to work with other institutions and share approaches, particularly to interdisciplinary research development, through our facilitated programmes. Having recently delivered a programme to the Circle U consortium of universities we have understood, first-hand the benefits that working across institutions can bring not only to developing research but also in expanding networks and bringing learning and contacts, particularly EU contacts, back to the University.
As the next rounds of EU-funding awards approaches and discussions begin around the successor to Horizon Europe (currently known as FP10) the support and development opportunities that UK institutions can provide will determine their success in accessing this funding. Our aim must be to ensure we are working together efficiently and effectively to provide the best platform possible for our academics to succeed.
For more information on the University of Leeds EU Funding team, please visit their pages on the Research and Innovation Service website.
For more information on the Horizons Institute, please visit our website.
