Applications for the NIHR Mentoring Programme are open! Are you interested in developing your career? Apply for the NIHR Mentoring Programme! This scheme partners late-PhD and postdoctoral NIHR Academy Members (researchers who’ve received career development awards/fellowships of various types from the NIHR) with a successful mentor in the same or similar field. The scheme allows…
by Shivani Joshi, the newest member of the Mental Health Research Incubator Team, who joined the retreat on only her second week! The retreat was ‘…hugely productive, upskilling, confidence-building and a wonderful opportunity to meet a community of like-minded researchers.’ Participant When the train pulled in at Didcot Station, the typical commuters were…
There are a couple of mental health related commissioned calls as part of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) funding stream at the moment! Increasing the evidence about mental health nursing and the mental health nursing workforce: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/funding/2489-research-in-mental-health-nursing-hta-programme/36407 (Deadline: Jan 2025) CBT adapted for autistic adults with a mental health problem: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/cbt-adapted-for-autistic-adults-with-a-mental-health-problem/36240 (Deadline: Nov 2024)…
Have you been involved in developing a digital or online mental health intervention? Wellcome Trust’s latest mental health call is looking to fund research to evaluate and further develop scalable digital interventions to advance early intervention in depression, anxiety and psychosis. Teams must have the research expertise required to drive the proposed research, an organisation…
RfPB invites proposals for research that improves the evidence base surrounding mental health nursing and the mental health workforce.
Our latest guest blog is by Lizzy Winstone, a senior research associate in epidemiology at The University of Bristol and one of our 2024 GROW cohort members. Lizzy writes here about her plans for her Churchill Fellowship – a non-academic grant scheme that supports UK citizens to travel abroad and bring ideas back to implement…
Do you need some headspace to write? We at the Mental Health Research Incubator are announcing our first fully-funded writing retreat for mental health and addiction researchers. Specifically aimed at ECRs who have recently completed fellowships or a PhD, the retreat offers headspace, structure, and a tranquil environment in which researchers can make the most…
Are you an early to mid career researcher looking to boost your research skills? The NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award (DSE) could be the right funding for you. The DSE award is a regularly occurring opportunity, aimed at early to mid-career researchers, to help them develop skills or experience necessary for the next steps…
‘Solving the crisis in mental health services: global solutions across the life span’ is an international mental health conference held in Glasgow. It’s a great opportunity for mental health researchers interested in global mental health issues to get together and share research. Now in its 5th year, this annual conference run by the CeDAR team…
This is some advance warning about a grant programme due to launch in mid April which will be of particular interest to clinical professionals working in mental health who want to take a neuroscience based approach to their research. The scheme has a novel matchmaking approach and is focused on tackling anxiety, depression and/or psychosis…
There are some funding schemes out there that can set up early career researchers and provide support for those tricky few years before research independence. The thrice yearly Wellcome Early-Career award is one of them, and therefore should be of significant interest to mental health and addiction ECRs. Even if it might seem a far…
Calling all registered health and care professionals! The NIHR recently launched a funding call specifically to help you prepare for a research grant application on any of NIHR’s funding streams. This is a great opportunity for anyone working on the front line of delivery who wants to develop a research component to your career by…
With the addition of £4.98m in additional funding the NIHR Three Schools Mental Health Project has launched three new open funding calls, each focused on a separate career stage. This call is for early career researchers with a PhD who are seeking funding to support their career development towards research independence and establish a research…
NIHR’s Three Schools Mental Health programme has just announced that it has launched its second phase of funding calls with an additional £4.98m available, so we thought we would do a little overview about each offering to help you understand more as they are really great opportunities. The first of the three open calls is…
We have exciting news – we at the Mental Health Research Incubator are pleased to announce that we are recruiting for the 2024 GROW programme cohort! GROW is a fully-funded programme for early career mental health and addiction researchers who have completed a PhD and who are moving towards an independent research career. GROW is…
This is a key one for ECRs in mental health research – the NIHR Pre-Application Support Fund! Read on for more info on why it is so useful. What is it? The fund is aimed at providing short term, 12 month, support to enable researchers to carve out time or otherwise prepare for an application…
All mental health researchers are rightly concerned about conducting ethical, valuable and reproducible research. Open science is a movement towards making research not only totally transparent, but also accessible. This can only be a good thing for research, and particularly mental health research, right? In our latest explainer post we briefly talk about open science…
Calling all ECR AHPs working in mental health research: the NIHR is launching its latest round of its research for patient benefit (RfPB) call this week on 13 December – this time focusing on projects which are led by allied health professionals! This is a perfect funding scheme to apply for for AHPs working in…
We’re happy to confirm that the Mental Health Research Incubator will be continuing in our mission to build a vibrant and supportive cross-disciplinary community of mental health researchers across the UK – hurrah! The coming years will see more cohorts of our GROW programme for postdoctoral researchers, as well as internship and placement opportunities, writing retreats…
The NIHR recently launched a new grant programme which is a great opportunity for early/mid career mental health researchers to support undergraduates to experience mental health research by having them as interns. Supervisor/applicant benefits This award is for early to mid career researchers who have yet to start establishing independence. In the first round the…
The McPin Foundation turned 10 this year and has been celebrating by rounding up a set of 10 excellent resources which bring together McPin’s expertise, learning and research in lived experience involvement from the last decade. These are all amazing resources for any one working in mental health research but especially anyone just starting out…
Getting a big grant or fellowship application together takes a very long time – often much longer than you might expect – certainly longer than the active application window. Many people have told us that it took them more than a year to get their application together. These funds are usually open to people from…
Contract opportunity for a mental health definitions project at Wellcome Trust
Celia Hulme, a current GROW cohort member based at University of Manchester and NIHR Three Schools Research Associate, has written about her experiences so far of participating in the GROW programme over on the NIHR SPCR website. Here are a couple of great quotes from the original post by Celia, check out the full post…
In our latest guest blog we have a piece by steering committee member Dr. Claire Wilson, a psychiatrist and academic at Kings College London. Claire is writing about how her range of clinical, research and policy experience are leading to impactful work in mental health. I am a psychiatrist and researcher. My area of…
Last week we held our first meeting for all GROW programme alumni – aka: The Great GROW Gathering! The gathering focused on providing relevant sessions for all the early career researchers in mental health and plenty of time for building those interdisciplinary networks which are so crucial for research. Our current GROW cohort is the…
The NIHR has just launched a new fund aimed at helping researchers prepare for one of their larger career development funds or fellowships. This is great news for all mental health researchers and definitely worth considering if you don’t feel quite ready for a fellowship application! The Pre-Application Support Fund launched on 19 September,…
The November 2023 round of the Wellcome Trust Career Development Awards is now open for applications from midcareer researchers in any discipline
We held our postdoc webinar this week with over 125 people online watching – did you catch it? Or maybe you followed along on Twitter? If you did you will have heard all the great tips and advice our panellists gave out for developing your postdoc careers in mental health research – whatever that looks…
Our latest Explainer should be helpful to all mental health researchers, whether early, mid or even late career – what the heck is a narrative CV?! You may have heard that funders and research adjacent organisations are driving a shift towards a resume format called a ‘narrative CV’. This shift is supported by several…
Registrations for the MHR Incubator career development webinar are now open. Register for your free place here: tinyurl.com/yc8znr5w and join the discussion on Tuesday 5 September.
Our GROW programme participants loved Dr Rachael Kelley’s tips on putting together a great funding application for mental health research so we’re really happy to be able to share Rachael’s valuable experience and advice on putting together a great research funding application with the wider community of mental health researchers. In this 16 minute presentation,…
Next in our Q&A series is a member of our current 20203 GROW programme, Floraidh Rolf who transitioned from front line work to mental health research. “her experiences over time exposed her to the power of research in driving good nursing practice and really making a difference to her patients’ lives” Flora researches mental health…
The Team Science Programme, run by NIHR, is an event and funding award opportunity for researchers who want to focus on an interdisciplinary approach to research which can improve the lives of people living with multiple long term conditions (MLTC). It is the first time NIHR have run this programme and is made up of…
If you were following our Twitter feed last week, you’ll know that our coordinator Bea was out at BABCP – the annual conference of CBT practitioners. It was fantastic to see there’s a real emphasis on the importance of research in the psychological professions generally (that really made our little Incubator hearts sing!). BABCP was…
Funding is the bread and butter of research and landing a big grant can set you up for several years of support. However, not all grants offered for mental health research are multi-year ones with thousands, or hundreds of thousands if you are lucky, of pounds on offer. Does that mean they are not worth…
Keen to take your research to the next level? Do you have an innovative research idea that could improve mental health and social care, which you would like to develop further? Already active in research but want to take things to the next level? ARC North Thames are delighted to advertise funding opportunities from Mental…
The DSE award is a post-doctoral level funding opportunity from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) aimed at supporting early to mid-career researchers in gaining specific skills and experience to underpin the next phase of their research career. In a change from previous rounds, applicants are no longer required to be Academy members.
The DSE award is a post-doctoral level funding opportunity from the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) aimed at supporting early to mid-career researchers in gaining specific skills and experience to underpin the next phase of their research career. In a change from previous rounds, applicants are no longer required to be Academy members.
The cross-ARC series of three webinars coming up in May, June and July looks at mental health in the context of some of the most topical themes of our times. In each webinar you’ll hear from the mental health researchers themselves talking about their work and what it means. Each webinar is a fantastic opportunity…
Shivani Joshi
Bea Shelley
Lee Esche
Lucy Radley