IAS Major Projects and Fellowships

The IAS supports, promotes and grows new and creative interdisciplinary ideas that transform our perspectives in challenging and provocative ways. We provide time, space, and resources to exchange and integrate ideas, knowledge and skills. We are a home to an inclusive, diverse and supportive community of scholars from Durham University and across the world.   

The IAS call for 2027/28 Major Projects is now open. We are inviting applications for Major Projects which should be genuinely interdisciplinary, innovative and ambitious. We encourage projects that have the potential to build towards research of the scale and ambition suited to large programme or centre type funding.  Projects may be led by up to two PIs (in two different faculties) with a wider team ideally involving collaboration across a broad range of disciplines.

MAJOR PROJECTS (to run in academic year 2027/28) 

These will be ambitious projects working across at multiple disciplines and across faculty boundaries. Successful projects will be supported with: 

• Up to two Durham Academic PIs awarded Christopherson-Knott Fellowships to buy out their time for one term to work on the project.
• Up to two high quality external IAS Fellows to visit Durham for a period of one term to work on the project. 
• Financial support of up to £3500 for research activities during the project. 
• Financial support to build activities in the year running up to the project term. 
• Further financial support to continue the momentum of the work from the project term in the following year. 

APPLICATIONS 

An initial brief project outline/expression of interest should be submitted to the IAS by midday GMT Thursday 15 January 2026 using this online form.   

All applicants (PIs) will be invited to the IAS on either Tuesday 20, Wednesday 21 or Thursday 22 January 2026 (see schedule in the above online form for date preferences) to briefly discuss their project and ideas with the IAS Directorate. This affords the opportunity for guidance and support to each project proposal as they go forward to a full application. 

Please be aware that Previous Major Project Investigators are ineligible to apply within five years (of their award), though they remain able to be part of the wider research team on a project. 

If the application goes forward, the date for full project application is midday GMT Thursday 19 March 2026.  The full application process will use an online application form (open from 26 January 2026) and will require more detailed information than the earlier January Expression of Interest submission and applicants will also, in addition to providing more detailed information about themselves such as a CV, be asked to outline how the project benefits from an interdisciplinary approach, provide a detailed project description (2 pages), outline the wider research team, and include budgetary details. 

All applications will be selected based on the following criteria (these are equally weighted): 

• Novelty and ambition: to what extent does the project open new perspectives and create new inter-disciplinary synergies? 
• Rigour: to what extent does the project employ appropriate and state-of-the-art concepts and methods, and/or develop promising new ones?  
• Clarity and quality of objectives: how clear and realistic are the intended outcomes; what impact will there be on Durham University’s research capacity and international competitiveness; how well does it fit with University and Department research strategies?
• Quality of the proposed research team: track record relative to career stage, including notable publications, awards, prizes and other esteem indicators, complementarity and suitability to the project objectives of team members’ expertise, evidence of interest in interdisciplinary perspectives; in the case of the PIs, evidence of intellectual leadership/leadership potential. 

Decisions will be relayed to all applicants by 14 April 2026, after which successful applications will be invited to nominate and submit Fellowship nominations. Further details about the nomination process and online forms are noted below.  The Nomination deadline is midday 21 May 2026.

ONLINE FORMS, GUIDANCE AND APPLICATION DEADLINES   

Guidance documents

ADDITIONAL

Colleagues interested in developing project applications are welcome to contact members of the IAS including:

• Professor Alex Easton (alexander.easton@durham.ac.uk) IAS Director
  
  
• Professor Gretchen Larsen, Co-Director, Business (gretchen.larsen@durham.ac.uk)
  
  
• Professor Nayanika Mookherjee, Co-Director, Social Sciences (nayanika.mookherjee@durham.ac.uk)
  
  
• Dr Margarita Staykova, Co-Director, Science (margarita.staykova@durham.ac.uk)
  
  
• Professor Patrick Zuk, Co-Director, Arts & Humanities (patrick.zuk@durham.ac.uk)
  
  

A drop-in session will be held at the IAS on Monday 09 February 2026 between 10am and 12pm in Cosin’s Hall for any colleague who wishes to come along and discuss the call in-person.

Enquiries can also be made to the IAS Manager, Linda Crowe (ias.manager@durham.ac.uk).