U21 Researcher Resilience Fund – Winners Announced

U21 is delighted to share news of the successful projects submitted to the Researcher Resilience Fund created as part of U21’s response to supporting its members during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Funding of up to $5,000 has been awarded to projects designed to help develop the network’s PhD and early career researchers’ capability and capacity to work digitally in order to adapt to life as a researcher post-COVID-19.

Twenty-one projects, to the value of over $100,000, have been selected to enable researchers in the U21 network to collaborate and build their digital capacity to develop global perspectives on problem-solving as well as cross-cultural and interdisciplinary working practices. The funded projects will create a suite of resources to be shared among researchers in the wider U21 network over the course of the next 12 months. With 89% of the U21 membership participating in the funded projects, we are looking forward to some truly global approaches to tackling challenges facing researchers in an intra and post-pandemic world.

The funding opportunity attracted applications from 96% of the U21 member universities and included researchers previously involved with other U21 initiatives. Ivano Bongiovanni (University of Queensland), an alumnus from the U21 Early Career Researcher Workshop 2019, recognised the need to act quickly in the wake of COVID-19:

“The Researcher Resilience Fund has been crucial for kick-starting a project that we have been thinking about for a while and with the outbreak of COVID-19, we identified a greater sense of urgency for its delivery. We are excited to have the opportunity to share our digital package, focused on running design-led workshops for teaching and learning, more widely with other researchers in the U21 network.”

Professor Bairbre Redmond, Provost of U21, said “the very high number of projects submitted for this funding stream is a reflection of how many researchers across the world are now looking for ways to adapt and maintain the momentum of their research in very difficult times. The quality and ingenuity of all the solutions put forward by the researchers in this scheme to overcome these challenges was very heartening indeed and I enjoyed reading them all. U21 is pleased to be able to support the development of many of these ideas and to promote new research partnerships across our network. I look forward very much to seeing the results of their work”.

Funded applications

Project Title: The U21 virtual geoscience fieldwork collaboration network: fieldwork in the age of COVID-19 and beyond

Lead University: McMaster University

Lead Applicant: Alexander L. Peace

Partner Universities: University of Queensland, University College Dublin

Project Title: Digitally advancing early career researchers: From methods to leadership in research

Lead University: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Lead Applicant: Andrea Casals Hill

Partner Universities: University New South Wales, Lund University

Project Title: Linguistic Data Collection in the age of a Pandemic

Lead University: University of Amsterdam

Lead Applicant: Viktorija Kostadinova

Partner Universities: KU Leuven, University of Edinburgh

Project Title: Developing and disseminating a digital toolkit for promoting and prioritizing emotional wellbeing among graduate-students and early-career researchers across the U21 Network

Lead University: University of Birmingham

Lead Applicant: Sarah Rockowitz

Partner Universities: McMaster University, University of Melbourne

Project Title: Towards better informed, more inclusive autism research: Building the U21 Autism Research Network

Lead University: University of Birmingham

Lead Applicant: Sophie Sowden

Partner Universities: University of Connecticut, UNSW, The University of Auckland, Waseda University, McMaster University

Project Title: Improving tropical forest resilience to human-climate pressures - learning from the past to guide the future (FOREPAST)

Lead University: University of Edinburgh

Lead Applicant: Charlotte E. Wheeler

Partner Universities: University of Hong Kong, University of Maryland

Project Title: New Research and Teaching Pathways in the Digital Age: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities for Criminologists and Sociologists During Covid-19

Lead University: University of Glasgow

Lead Applicant: Emiline Smith

Partner Universities: University of Hong Kong

Project Title: Reimagining fieldwork in the interconnected world: ethnography-inspired digital strategies under the COVID-19 challenges

Lead University: University of Hong Kong

Lead Applicant: Yichen Rao

Partner Universities: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, University of Queensland, University California, Davis

Project Title: Thriving in a Post COVID age:An International Collaboration And Career Development Tool to Increase Diversity and Inclusion in Healthcare Management, Health Services, and Health Policy Research

Lead University: University of Maryland

Lead Applicant: Negin Fouladi

Partner Universities: University of Birmingham

Project Title: Remote Collaborative Translation: Modern Chinese Social and Political Thought

Lead University: University of Melbourne

Lead Applicant: Craig A. Smith

Partner Universities: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, University of Glasgow, Lund University

Project Title: Developing sustainable participatory approaches to child reearch during and after COVID-19

Lead University: University of Melbourne

Lead Applicant: Katitza Marinkovic

Partner Universities: University College Dublin

Project Title: Reimagining academic horizons: Stories we tell

Lead University: University of Melbourne

Lead Applicant: Marian Mahat

Partner Universities: National University of Singapore, University of Hong Kong

Project Title: Establishment of a non-significant research results sharing platform

Lead University: University of Melbourne

Lead Applicant: Yanqi Wu

Partner Universities: University of Hong Kong

Project Title: Cardographer Online - Digitising Intelligent Card Based Tools

Lead University: University of Nottingham

Lead Applicant: Dimitrios Darzentas

Partner Universities: University of Edinburgh, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Project Title: Research Chats: Expert Advice on Research in the Digital Age