The Leverhulme Trust Dr Anne Dean Assistant Director

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The Leverhulme TrustDr Anne DeanAssistant
Director
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The Leverhulme Trust
William Hesketh Lever from 1922 Lord
Leverhulme of the Western Isles (1851-1925)
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The Leverhulme Trust

• Established in 1925
• A proportion of Lord Leverhulmes interest in
  Lever Brothers (later to become Unilever plc)
  left in Trust for specific beneficiaries
• Certain trade charities
• Scholarships for the purposes of research and
  education

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Scholarships for the purposes of research and
  education
• support for the gifted individual
• postgraduate level
• all subjects

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The Leverhulme Trust

• The Trustees
• Diverse backgrounds
• Drawn from senior management of Unilever plc
• Generalist experience
• Appraisal experience
• Resistant to fashion

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Inclinations of the Trustees
• the suitability of the research for support by
  the Trust
• emphasis on opinion of various peer reviewers
  (both those nominated by the applicant and
  independent reviewers appointed by the Trust)
• mixture of disciplines (blurring
  boundaries/lateral impact)
• courageous research (avoidance of the
  incremental)
• individual exploration (hesitation with data
  banks/cataloguing)

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The Leverhulme Trust

• .as well as
• originality of the proposed work
• impact of the research outcome on other fields of
  study and within the immediate field of research
• the applicants ability to judge and take
  appropriate risk promising blue skies
  research
• the extent to which the research design
  transcends traditional boundaries
• the extent to which a proposal represents a
  refreshing departure from the established working
  patterns either of the individual or of the
  discipline

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The Leverhulme Trust

• The Trust tends to avoid those specific
  disciplines which other Trusts or agencies are
  disposed to support. These include
• medicine
• school education

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The Leverhulme Trust

• With c. 25M available each year, the Leverhulme
  Trust cannot act as funder of last resort for a
  government system with
• 1,500M p.a.

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Under the terms of the Founders Will, the Trust
  is unable to engage in
• FULL ECONOMIC COSTING.
• Therefore, overheads and similar costs cannot be
  supported.

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The Leverhulme Trust

• The majority of awards given by the Trust are
  made (via a 2-stage process at Outline and Full
  Application stage) to institutions mostly under
  our Research Project Grant scheme
• .but we offer numerous other awards,
• including

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Programme Grants (1.25M for selected themes)
  for 2007, the topics are Ceremony and Ritual and
  The Uses of Higher Education.
• Various Fellowships (Visiting, Early Career,
  Emeritus) and Study Abroad
• Major Research Fellowships in the Humanities and
  Social Sciences
• Academic Collaboration International Networks,
  Visiting Professorships
• Philip Leverhulme Prizes
• and

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Training and Professional Development in the
  Fine and Performing Arts

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The Leverhulme Trust
Training and Professional Development
Scheme These awards are mainly to permit
(normally young) people to obtain training or
professional development and are based upon a
combination of talent and need. Awards are made
directly to institutions for provision of
bursaries or scholarships for the maintenance of
selected groups of students. Applications from
individual students are not eligible. The Trust
also supports innovative teaching activity, and
research into various aspects of the
Arts.
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The Leverhulme Trust

• ..Among the organisations we support are

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The Leverhulme Trust
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The Leverhulme Trust

• We also offer residencies under our
• Artist in Residence Scheme
• For artists of any kind, including musicians
• Usually for one academic year
• Up to 12,000
• Contrasting disciplines i.e. a poet in a
  university chemistry department, a playwright in
  a museum, a fine artist in a hospital
  environment.

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Distribution of funds between schemes

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The Leverhulme Trust
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The Leverhulme Trust

• Research Project Grants
• To enable established scholars at eligible
  institutions to obtain support for a research
  assistant(s) support for a postgraduate
  student(s) replacement teaching costs for
  applicant associated costs to meet modest direct
  support costs for project. It is not normally
  possible for applicants to bid for their own
  salary.
• Three levels up to 125,000 (up to 3 years)
  125,000-250,000 (up to 3 years) and
  250,000-500,000 (up to 5 years).
• Eligibility criteria originality significance
  and added value significance for work for other
  subject areas merits of proposed methodology,
  researchers and institution for intended work.
• The Trust is unlikely to support pilot schemes.

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Each year, the Trust receives c. 1,500 Outline
  proposals for Research Project Grants
• A small proportion are deemed ineligible i.e.
  they fall within those areas generally not
  supported by the Trust, or are received from
  ineligible institutions
• The great majority go forward for peer review -
  the Leverhulme Advisory Panel.

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• The Leverhulme Trust

Outline Application Form There are no closing
dates for the submission of Outline Applications
to the Trust
Up to 12 weeks average 6 weeks
Outline Application undergoes initial review
Outline Application rejected on grounds of
eligibility or quality
Recommendation that applicant be invited to make
a Full Application
Applicant submits Full Application with two named
referees. Closing dates for Full Applications
21 March, 1 September, 1 December
Three deadlines each year 21 March, 1 September
and 1 December
Independent referees and the applicants named
referees are consulted by the Trust
The proposal and the comments of referees are
submitted to the Trustees for decision
Application Rejected
Application Approved
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The Leverhulme Trust

• Some current Research Project Grant subjects
• Voting power in practice
• Migration, race and population dynamics
  explaining Britains ethnic geography
• Life on the move through deep time has a
  universal search rule evolved in animals?
• The Toba super-eruption and its impact on human
  populations and ecosystems
• Inscriptions of Roman Cyrenaica an online corpus
• Spoken word frequency and the tempo of linguistic
  evolution
• Neuro-economic analyses of herding in economics
  and finance
• The life, thought and politics of Cambodian
  Buddhist monk Khieu Chum (1907-1975)
• Mineral eyes lessons from the natural world
• Where quantum meets classical foundational
  structures and their ramifications
• Adaptive optics for the nano-fabrication of
  nonlinear photonic crystals
• Free blacks, expulsion and enslavement in the
  antebellum American South
• Submerged landscape archaeology of the
  continental shelf
• Renaissance cultural crossroads an analytical
  and annotated catalogue of translations
• Composition, corrosion and origins of medieval
  stained glass
• Turbulent entrainment in plumes with internal
  generation of buoyancy
• A Euro-Brazilian Network for improving South
  American seasonal climate forecasts

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Research Fellowships
• To support experienced researchers to complete
  a programme of original research (particularly
  those prevented from so doing by pressure of
  routine duties)
• Approximately 100 awards offered in 2006
• Fellowships between 3 and 24 months
• Eligible costs research expenses/contribution
  towards replacement teaching costs or loss of
  earnings Maximum value is 30K.
• Applicants normally over 30 and resident in the
  UK

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Early Career Fellowships
• To provide career development opportunities for
  those with a proven record of research who do not
  hold/have not held a full-time established
  academic post in a UK university.
• Applicants should normally be under 35 and have a
  PhD or equivalent research experience. The
  applicants PhD thesis should have been submitted
  by the closing date.
• The Trust will contribute 50 of each Fellows
  total salary costs to a max of 21K, the balance
  being paid by the institution. Research expenses
  of up to 5K per annum may also be awarded.
• Fellowships are held for 24 months and should be
  taken up between the beginning of the next
  academic year and 1 May of that year.
• Fellowships can be held at universities or at
  other higher education institutions in the UK.

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The Leverhulme Trust

• Full details of all schemes can be found on our
  website
• www.leverhulme.ac.uk
• or (in hard copy) in our Guide for Applicants,
  available upon request to
• The Leverhulme Trust
• 1 Pemberton Row
• London EC4A 3BG
• Tel [phone]