Vulnerability & Policing ECR Development Fund

Funding is available to teams that are led by early career researchers and that involve collaboration with non-academic organisations for projects relating to vulnerability and policing.

The Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre is an organisation based in the UK that seeks to re-envision the ways in which police and their partners work in order to ultimately reduce harm among vulnerable people. Research undertaken is built on collaborations with police, local authorities, charities and non-governmental organisations. The Centre brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers from around the world to aid in its central objectives.

The Centre operates the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Development Fund in order to build research capacity and capability to tackle current and emerging challenges related to vulnerability and policing. The Fund supports grants led by early career researchers in the UK that produce new knowledge, encourage innovation, develop partnerships and generate follow-on research funding through further grant applications. Through the Fund, the Centre hopes to expand its reach by co-producing projects that will contribute to new findings, methodological applications and conceptual insights. The scheme provides pump-priming funds to support research in areas where gaps in knowledge are most prominent and where benefits are of greatest value. All projects are expected to represent the values and principles of the Centre.

Projects in all fields related to policing and vulnerability are eligible for this call. For the 2023-2024 call, the Centre is particularly interested in the following themes:

• Vulnerability and neurodivergence.
• Race, ethnicity and vulnerability.
• Asylum seekers and vulnerable migrants.

Proposals that engage with how vulnerability and policing impact upon one or more of the above themes are especially welcome.

The Centre also welcomes proposals that involve innovative methodologies and/or those that combine different datasets.