Please address each of the questions on the Application Form.

What are the ethical challenges and implications arising from the proposed research, and how will they be addressed?

Every project will face unique ethical challenges, so please think carefully about ethics in the context of your own research. Further guidance on research ethics is available on our website in the document ‘Research Projects – Ethics (p. 2-8). Please speak with experienced academic colleagues for advice on how to address ethical challenges in the context of your own project.

How will you ensure that the research undergoes appropriate ethical review?

All projects must secure ethical approval from an appropriate institution before research can begin. For example, universities normally require their researchers to submit an application for ethical approval to an Ethics Officer or Research Director, who reviews the research plans to ensure they conform to internationally and locally accepted ethical guidelines. The reviewer can approve the project, or they can require the research team to adopt different ethical practices. In some circumstances where the research raises high-risk ethical issues, it can be referred to a Research Ethics Panel for approval.

You can apply for ethical approval after the project has been awarded funding, if this is in line with your own organisation’s processes, but the process must be completed before the research begins.

In the application form, you must describe how you will ensure that the project undergoes appropriate ethical review. Will you submit an application at your own organisation for ethical approval, and if so, what are the processes? If the project is awarded funding, we will require evidence to confirm that the ethical review processes are appropriate.

If your own organisation does not have processes for ethical approval, you will need to ensure that the project will be able to undergo ethical review at another organisation. Does your project include Co-Investigators or Project Partners? Would it be possible for the project to undergo ethical review at their organisation?

What measures will you take to ensure the safety and wellbeing of project staff, research participants, or any other people involved in or impacted by the project?

Please think carefully about safety and wellbeing in the context of your own project, and please see the Creating Safer Space Safeguarding Policy (available soon on our website) for potential questions and issues to consider. For advice on how to develop fair and equitable research projects and partnerships, please read the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings.

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Please address each of the three questions on the Application Form, and please consult widely with individuals and organisations with experience of working in the relevant region. It is often a good idea to invite organisations with direct experience of working in the region to be Project Partners.

The Creating Safer Space network may offer training workshops on how to undertake risk assessments for conducting research in conflict settings – please subscribe to our newsletter to find out about forthcoming events.

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The funding for the Creating Safer Space network forms part of the UK’s foreign aid budget, and each application must demonstrate eligibility for foreign aid funding. There is likely to be some overlap between this section and the Case for Support. Please use this section as an opportunity to elaborate and explain further how the project will benefit people living in an eligible DAC list country or countries. Please answer each of the questions on the Application Form in turn.

The sub-questions refer to ‘development challenges’. One of the key development challenges identified by the Global Challenges Research Fund, which funds the Creating Safer Space network, is “Security, Protracted Conflict, Refugee Crises and Forced Displacement”. It is expected that most Creating Safer Space projects should help to address some aspect of this development challenge. Please contact creating-safer-space@aber.ac.uk in advance if your project is focusing on a different development challenge.

Make sure to provide evidence to show that the development challenge that you are focusing on is a significant problem in your focus country or countries. What is the nature and scale of the problem – for example, how many people would be affected by improvements in this area? Many projects will focus on a specific local community, but might your research also lead to insights that could benefit other conflict-affected communities in the same country or in other countries?

Make clear who will potentially benefit from the project, how they will benefit, and what you will do to ensure these benefits are actually realised. While it is recognized that benefits from research are always uncertain and cannot be guaranteed, it is important to show that you have developed realistic and appropriate plans. For example, if you think local communities in a particular conflict area will benefit from research into new strategies for civilian protection, what will you do to ensure these benefits actually happen? How will you ensure the research is appropriate to the needs of this community and relevant to their circumstances? Will you work with the community at an early stage, to ensure the proposal and the research methods are appropriate to the community? How will you communicate the findings of the research? Will you produce outputs, in local languages, that the community is likely to engage with? Will you work with local community groups to ensure dissemination of the outputs?

Consider using participatory research methods, whereby researchers and participants work together to understand a problematic situation and to change it for the better. The Creating Safer Space network offers training in participatory research methods, and this can be a way to ensure that a community directly benefits from the research within the lifetime of the project. To find out more about participatory research methods, please visit our website and subscribe to our newsletter to find out about forthcoming events.

Building research capacity in DAC list countries is an important potential contribution of the project in its own right (though not sufficient on its own). For example, will early career researchers working on the project be given the opportunity to undertake relevant training, or to present the research at a conference?

Further advice is available in the UKRI ODA Guidance and in these observations by research funders. For advice on how to develop fair and equitable research projects and partnerships, please read the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings.

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The Budget Form contains three sheets:

1. LMIC Organisation Costs: Please add any costs that will be transferred to LMIC organisations here.
2. UK Organisation Costs: Please add any costs that will be transferred to UK organisations here.
3. Total Costs: Please add the costs from Sheet 1 and Sheet 2 here.

Example: Imagine a project that involves a collaboration between two organisations: a university in the Philippines and a university in the UK. The university in the Philippines adds their costs to Sheet 1, and the university in the UK adds their costs to Sheet 2. What matters is which organisation will spend the cost, not where the cost will be spent. If the Investigator in the UK travels to the Philippines for fieldwork, their accommodation costs within the Philippines will still go into Sheet 2 for ‘UK Organisation Costs’.

If there are many organisations involved in the project, you may find it easier to create one sheet for each organisation.

General guidance on using Excel

Please use a separate row/line for each budget item, and feel free to add additional rows where needed. Please contact creating-safer-space@aber.ac.uk if you experience any difficulties with the Excel form.

Explanation of each category in Sheet 1 and Sheet 2

Item name and Description:  This is used to describe the budget item.

Justification:  This is used to describe why you need the budget item to carry out the project. In some cases, you may also need to show why the cost is appropriate – this is especially important if there is a chance that the Funding Panel will think that you have over-estimated the cost. The ‘Justification’ is the most important section of the budget. The Funding Panel will not fund the project if you have not fully justified why you need each budget item and if they are not satisfied that the costs are reasonable.

Organisation:  Please specify which organisation will purchase this resource. If the project is awarded funding, this column will be used to work out how much money to transfer to each organisation, and this will then be set out in the contract for the project. Please split the costs between organisations fairly, as this influences how much overheads each organisation is entitled to.

Amount in Local Currency:  Please add the amount in the currency that the resource will be purchased in.

Conversion Rate:  Please specify the conversion rate between the local currency and GBP. We will use Oanda to check that your conversions are reasonable, but your organisation may use a specific conversion rate (e.g. as specified by your country’s central bank).

Amount in GBP:  Please use the conversion rate specified to calculate the amount in GBP.

Full Economic Cost (FEC) and Award Value:  UK organisations will be funded in accordance with normal UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Research Council funding rules. Please ask your research office for assistance in completing the form.

Explanation of total costs in Sheet 3

In Sheet 3 (Total Cost), you are asked to specify the “Full Economic Cost (FEC)” and the “Award Value”.

For organisations in countries other than the UK, these will be the same – our funding will fully cover the cost of the project. If the total cost of the project, as listed in Sheet 1, is £30,000, you write £30,000 in both B3 and C3 in Sheet 3.

For UK organisations, we provide funding in accordance with standard procedures for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) grants, in other words 80 % of full economic cost, with the recipient organisation required to cover the balance. Please ask your Research Office for advice on how to fill in the budget form, as they will have specific ways to calculate salaries, indirect and estate costs.

Please note that a Large Grant is £30,000 – £100,000 at Full Economic Cost (FEC) and a Small Grant is £20,000 – £30,000 at Full Economic Cost (FEC).

Further information

Before you fill in the Budget Form, it will help to familiarize yourself with our finance procedures for grant holders (for LMIC organisations only).

Please note that the following are not eligible for funding:

• Capital or infrastructure expenditure (e.g. basic office equipment, furniture, building/site construction, maintenance or refurbishment work, improvements to digital connective infrastructure, etc).
• Equipment purchases above £10,000. Equipment below £10,000 are eligible for funding, but only where significant use of equipment is required specifically and primarily or solely for the proposed research activity and where this is more cost effective for the project than other options such as hiring equipment.

Further information about overheads:

• Organisations are welcome to apply for funding for overheads. Basic office items and facilities should be covered by the overheads (computers, library access, photocopying, telephone calls and day-to-day consumables).

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A Letter of Support must be provided from the Lead Organisation, and should be signed by someone with the appropriate level of authority within the organisation – this should be someone other than the Principal Investigator. The letter should be on letter-headed paper, and consist of the following statement:

“I am pleased to confirm that [name of Principal Investigator] is authorised to apply for this Creating Safer Space grant on behalf of our organisation. If the project is awarded funding, our organisation will provide full support to enable the Principal Investigator to carry out the project. The Principal Investigator will be permitted to carry out the project in their work time.”

There is no need to provide any further information. The letter will be checked to ensure the applicant’s eligibility, but will not be shared with the Funding Panel and will not otherwise form part of the review process.

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A Letter of Support must be provided from each Project Partner, and should be signed by someone with the appropriate level of authority within the organisation. The letter should be written when the proposal is being prepared and should be targeted specifically to the project. Each letter of support should be max. 2 pages of A4 on headed paper.

The letter should articulate the benefits of the collaboration to the Project Partner, and the relevance of the project to the Project Partner’s wider work. For example, if the Project Partner’s main aim is to support people who have been displaced by conflict in a particular region, does the project have the potential to support that work and to benefit those displaced people?

The letter should also identify the role of the Project Partner in the project, the full nature of the collaboration or the support that it will provide, and how the Project Partner will provide added value to the project. Project Partner letters of support that merely indicate that an organisation is interested in the research are not permitted – Project Partners should always play an integral role in the proposed research (e.g. facilitating access to research participants etc.) or in furthering the research’s dissemination and knowledge exchange (e.g. organising/hosting a dissemination event, pledging to seek to integrate research findings into the organisation’s practices etc.).

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