The MHR Incubator is excited to announce that we will be running two fully-funded writing retreats for mental health researchers in 2026! Our Fellowship Planning Retreat, will take place from 1-3 July 2026 in Gladstone’s Library, North Wales. We will also run the third iteration of our popular Paper Writing Retreat, dedicated to writing up…
Applications are now open for October 2026 entry in the King’s PhD Programme in Mental Health Research for Health Professionals! This programme is funded by Wellcome and King’s College London, and means that successful applicants will have full home (UK) fees paid for, and a salary matched to the applicant’s clinical salary for three years…
Dr Cecilia Busari, a psychiatrist and mental health researcher, is offering a tailored programme aimed at research and academic colleagues who are interested in equipping themselves with wellbeing skills and tools to enable them to reduce stress, improve wellbeing and strengthen healthy performance to mitigate mental illness for better career success. Participants will be invited…
Are you working in mental health? Are you interested in improving mental health care through research? Training in clinical research delivery is a vital step for mental health professionals to create system level improvements in mental health care and services. Join the webinar on Weds 7 May to find out more about the funded Masters’…
An exciting opportunity for mental health practitioners who want to start or advance their career in clinical research! The NIHR Mental Health Translational Research Collaboration (MH-TRC) Mental Health Mission (MHM), in partnership with King’s College London and the University of Exeter, are offering 11 fully funded MSc courses in Clinical Research Delivery. The MSc online…
We are very happy to announce that we will be running not only one but two writing retreats for mental health researchers in 2025! New for next year is our fellowship application writing retreat, which will take place from 1-3 July 2025 in Gladstone’s Library, in North Wales. And following on from great feedback, we…
Do you work in an addiction service? Or are you an academic researcher of addiction? The MHR Incubator is offering two distinct types of funded placement opportunities for addiction service providers and university research groups to host researchers. Through our placement and internship programmes, we’re seeking to enable you to ask and answer the right…
The NIHR has recently announced changes to its funding and application process, in order to facilitate inclusion in health and care research. In order to support the NIHR’s mission of improving the nation’s health and wealth, applicants will now be required to demonstrate how inclusion is is found in all areas of the research design….
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…
Are you looking to launch your research career pre-PhD? Opening in January/February annually, the NIHR pre-doctoral fellowship aims to support clinical and non-clinical professionals on their path to becoming future leading researchers. The year-long fellowship helps recipients to develop the necessary skills and experience they might need before starting a PhD. The funding is generally…
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…
‘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…
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…
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…
The Three NIHR Research Schools have announced a further £4.98m of additional funding for phase two of their support programme for mental health research. This funding is available in the form of 3 structured open calls, at the moment, each aimed at people at different stages in their research career. This one is for 8…
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…
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…
Are you wanting to take your mental health research career to the next level and thinking of applying to the NIHR Doctoral Fellowship? The current round is open until 1300hrs, 1 February 2024. However, it comes up twice a year in April and October so check out these resources and be ahead for the next…
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…
Are you a trainee medic thinking about getting into mental health research? This exciting Mental Health Research Taster Days opportunity presented by the NIHR Mental Health Mission [nihr.ac.uk] Capacity Development workstream is for you! Ideal if you fancy just dipping a toe in. All FY2 medical trainees with interest in mental health research are encouraged…
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…
If you’re a mental health worker based in the North Thames region and you’re a little bit curious about how you might do more research in your role take a look at the one-day training at on developing your path in mental health research at ARC North Thames. The course was co-created by recipients of…
The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is providing opportunities for individuals working in local authority settings to undertake short placements to enhance their careers and develop skills and capabilities to co-create research that is more meaningful and better connected with practice. The placements include funding of up to £15,000 per individual and…
The NIHR have just launched their third annual call for Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship applications. The submission deadline is 7 December 2023. Mental health researchers in local authority settings have benefitted from this scheme in the past – do take a look at our case studies for examples. The NIHR Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship…
The next round of applications for the King’s PhD programme in mental health research for health professionals has opened! Clinicians both from within and outside disciplines traditionally involved in mental health are strongly encouraged to apply. Supervisory teams will combine clinical and non-clinical academics to ensure that PhD fellows gain expertise in technical and scientific…
Guest blog By Rachel Murphy Having successfully completed a mental health research fellowship, social work manager Rachel Murphy is now setting up systems to make North Yorkshire Council ready for a lot more research. In the process she has generated much more interest in and support for research from across her organisation. In this blog…
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…
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…
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…
Following a recent article by Dr Eleanor Chatburn on engaging with research as a clinician, two allied health professionals (AHPs) working at Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust (TEWV) have provided an overview of their own research journeys to-date. Ask an AHP! We all know allied health professionals (AHPs) play a vital role…
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 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…
The Student Mental Health Research Network (SMaRteN), led by Kings College London, is collaborating with All Things Mental Health to produce a second series of their successful podcast Keeping Students in Mind: Understanding Student Mental Health Research. They are looking for students interested in mental health research to host podcast episodes, with training and support…
Not sure whether a research conference is for you? Master’s students and Emerging Minds Network interns Rowan and Felicity reflect on their experience of getting involved with the recent Emerging Minds Summit on children and young people’s mental health research, the range of different people they encountered there, and how other early career researchers can…
Two early career mental health researchers, Domna Salonen and Dr Emma Černis, offer their perspectives on how to set up the mentoring relationships that support and challenge you to pursue what’s fulfilling in your career. There is no prescriptive answer to ‘How to find a mentor?’. The key ingredients in finding mentors for us have…
How can local authority staff be supported to implement evidence-based practices for mental health? – by supporting the existing staff to become research-active themselves! Rachel Murphy joined one of the first cohorts of practitioner researchers on the Pre-Doctoral Local Authority Fellowship last year. Here she explains the amazing professional development she has gained from the…
Free online course This free open access course explains simply how medical treatments are discovered, tested and evaluated. If you’re curious about research, this might be a great place to start: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/clinical-research
Shivani Joshi
Bea Shelley
MHR Editor