UKRI Building a Secure and Resilient World: Research and Coordination Hub

Funding to establish a research and coordination hub to catalyse, convene and conduct research and innovation across UKRI’s Building a Secure and Resilient World (BSRW) strategic theme.

UK Research and Innovation has launched this opportunity to establish a Research and Coordination Hub to coordinate activity across UKRI’s Building a Secure and Resilient World (BSRW) strategic theme. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is leading the opportunity with support from the six other UKRI research councils and Innovate UK (IUK).

The Research and Coordination Hub will coordinate and maximise the impact of the range of activities commissioned by UKRI ensuring an integrated approach throughout. It will be expected to lead, plan, deliver and manage a multidisciplinary programme of research and devolved funding opportunities in identified areas of knowledge and evidence gaps within the scope of the theme.

Specifically, the hub will be expected to:

• Establish and maintain a research community around the BSRW strategic theme by developing relationships and improved connections between a variety of relevant stakeholders.
• Work with the grain of government policy such as the integrated review and the UK government resilience framework.
• Build multi and interdisciplinary capability, leverage existing partnerships and establish new ones.
• Deliver a multidisciplinary programme of devolved funding activities, develop and run open opportunities for research projects that will directly engage with the priorities and themes of the BSRW programme.
• Assess and determine what the UK needs in terms of research, research infrastructure and skills to support the development of this strategic programme.
• Ensure through collaborative and consultative public engagement that people from across the UK, from different regions, backgrounds and beliefs, are represented in future planning and preparedness.
• Ensure that global security and resilience and the needs of all countries are considered in planning, and approached through equitable partnering.
• Co-design elements of the project with UKRI during the initial stages of the hub, incorporating any relevant research and policy inputs.
• Develop, publish and maintain a set of policy recommendations, drawing in expertise from relevant disciplines and providing thought leadership in the programme’s subthemes.
• Identify research challenges, opportunities and priorities for the programme with users, academia, government and third-sector stakeholders that need to be addressed over the lifetime of the coordination hub.
• Represent and promote the UK academic and research community in interactions with key stakeholders around the BSRW programme.
• Develop communications, knowledge exchange, public engagement, coordinated networking, and wider stakeholder engagement plans, in order to co-create activities, widely disseminate findings, improve alignment of research, policy and innovation and increase coherence across the programme.
• Establish an appropriate management and governance model with effective monitoring and evaluation, develop a clear equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) plan, and support early career researchers.

Funding will be available for five years. Projects must start on 1 February 2024.