Call for Proposals: Small Research Grants (SRGs)

SRGs can fund research assistance, data collection and/or purchase, and potentially research stipends/teaching buyouts (if sufficiently justified). Grants also support travel to field sites, even when secondary data is utilised. They view this kind of travel (with the possibilities for field visits and conversations with policymakers) as particularly important for researchers who lack prior experience in the countries that they intend to study.

The Structural Transformation and Economic Growth (STEG) programme pursues a research agenda that aims to provide a better understanding of structural change, productivity, and growth in low- and middle-income countries.

The objective of STEG is to fund cutting-edge that could be published in leading academic journals while simultaneously being relevant to the policy dialogue in low- and middle-income countries.

Any comparison of low-income countries and developed economies immediately points to striking differences in their structural features. Relative to the advanced economies, the least developed are disproportionately rural and agrarian, more reliant on self-employment and small-scale subsistence production, and less integrated into local, national, and international markets. Economic growth is critical for sustained poverty reduction in low-income economies, but it will surely involve dramatic shifts in the structure of economic activity. A research programme which can inform policies for structural transformation must address a variety of issues and incorporate a variety of approaches.

STEG therefore pursues a range of approaches that promise to produce credible research useful for policymaking and to support research related to different aspects of structural transformation.

Research Themes

• Themes:
  • Data, measurement, and conceptual framing;
  • Firms, frictions and spillovers, and industrial policy;
  • Labour, home production, and structural transformation at the level of households;
  • Agricultural productivity and sectoral gaps;
  • Trade and spatial frictions;
  • Political economy and public investment.
• Other areas of interest may not fit cleanly into any of the themes but are centrally relevant to STEG and are also encouraged.
• STEG is also focused around three cross-cutting issues that are simultaneously relevant to many areas of structural transformation, including the six research themes:
  • Gender;
  • Climate change and the environment;
  • Inequality and inclusion.
• Research proposals speaking to these issues will receive particular consideration.

Funding Information

• Amount: Small Research Grants (SRGs) of between £10,000 and £25,000.
• An SRG is intended to be completed within 12 months. Please note that contracts should be signed within one month of the return of the final decision, which is also the expected project start date.

Country and Policy Relevance 

• Please note that an important criterion for funding of proposals is the relevance to policy in lowincome countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Proposals focused on middle- and/or highincome countries need to make a clear case for the relevance of the research to policy in specific lowincome countries. Proposals are also evaluated on the extent to which the research findings (including those from comparative work or from studies in other geographies) might be relevant to policy in specific sub-Saharan countries.

Eligibility Criteria

• They welcome applications to the SRG and PhD calls from researchers all over the world, and encourage applications that propose collaboration between researchers from lower- and higher-income countries.
• In view of the current political situation and the imposition of economic sanctions on various Russian entities by Western governments, they are not currently able to accept proposals for projects that include researchers or members of the research team who are based at Russian institutions.
• Principal investigators applying to SRG calls should currently have a PhD or be enrolled in a PhD programme. In exceptional circumstances, they will consider applications submitted by principal investigators who do not fit these criteria, however, they must be able to demonstrate a history of high-quality academic and/or policy-relevant research. Although there are no formal qualification requirements for co-investigators, co-investigators on STEG-funded projects usually have a PhD or are enrolled in a PhD programme. The knowledge, expertise, and qualifications of the entire research team will be taken into account when evaluating the proposal.

For more information, visit STEG.