ESRC Digital Good Network: Digital Good Research Fund ‘Building the digital good’: call for applications

Overview

Proposals should build on their prior research and their discussion paper Evaluating the societal outcomes of digital technologies: building blocks and reflexive questions.

What they are looking for

• Their third Digital Good Research Fund call will support work that focuses on ‘Building the digital good’. 
• The call focuses on the second part of their central research question:  what does a good digital society look like and how do we get there?  

‘Building the digital good’ invites proposals that build on, engage with, test and challenge the ideas in the discussion paper Evaluating the societal outcomes of digital technologies: building blocks and reflexive questions. 

The discussion paper presents the emerging themes from their research so far, which they describe as the ‘building blocks’ for a good digital society. The building blocks inform a set of reflexive questions for evaluating whether digital technologies have good societal outcomes, which we present in the discussion paper. The questions aim to initiate a conversation about whether and how we can evaluate ‘the digital good’ – a phrase they use to talk about the characteristics of a good digital society. As such, they are not set in stone. 

• They want interested stakeholders to think with them about the best reflexive questions for building and evaluating the digital good, and to work with them over the next two years to test out, challenge, iterate and revise them. This call invites you to join them in that process.

‘Building the digital good’ invites proposals that build on or advance their research findings and outputs.

Proposed projects may do one or more of the following:

• generate or rework digital technologies with the intention of achieving the digital good 
• explore how the digital good might be built in to specific technologies, contexts and domains
• consider the role of diverse communities, sectors and organisations in building the digital good
• test methodological innovations for building the digital good.

They welcome applications which examine, apply or demonstrate particular approaches to building the digital good. Whilst they are not prescriptive about which methods and approaches projects should use to build the digital good, they anticipate that practical or  engineering or design-led approaches may be appropriate for this call.

To understand what they mean when they use the term ‘the digital good’ and how they are thinking about it, you may find it useful read their recent paper, What Do We Mean When We Talk About a Good Digital Society? 

Methodologies

They have reviewed the disciplines, methodologies, teams and topic areas of existing Digital Good Network research, and have identified some gaps they would like to fill to enable them to meet their objectives.

They encourage applications which:

• use quantitative or computational methods
• are led by disciplines currently underrepresented in the network including  psychology, computer science and economics
• use secondary data (ie, engage with existing data or datasets, rather than creating new ones).

For previously funded work visit their research page. But please note, they welcome novel proposals which include disciplines, methods, teams and topic areas that are currently not represented in their existing portfolio of research, and that address issues they haven’t thought about!

Funding Level

They will dedicate up to £300,000 (£240,000 at 80% fEC) to funding applications that respond to this call. They will fund multiple projects and the maximum funding that each project can apply for is £75,000 (£60,000 at 80% fEC).

In keeping with standard UKRI funding procedures, they support projects at 80% of the Full Economic Costs. Lead institutions are expected to make up the remaining 20%.  

The below groups can claim eligible costs at 100% of Full Economic Cost:

• Non-academic organisations (i.e. UK business, third sector and government bodies) (in accordance with the ESRC project co-leads from UK business, third sector or government bodies policy)
• International organisations (in accordance with the UKRI International Co-Lead Policy and Project co-lead (international) policy guidance). 

Eligibility

The Project Lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UKRI funding.  Teams can also include:

• eligible project co-leads (international) (in accordance with the UKRI International Co-Lead Policy and Project co-lead (international) policy guidance)
• project co-leads from UK business, third sector or government bodies (in accordance with the ESRC project co-leads from UK business, third sector or government bodies policy)
• eligible public sector research establishments
• internationally or UK based Project partners (UKRI define partners as collaborators who are not paid through the project, and who contribute in-kind or other resources to the project).

They fund in accordance with ESRC’s Research Funding Guide.