Data Impact Fellows 2023
Are you an early career researcher in the academic or VCSE sector?
Is your research related to one of these themes:
- poverty, deprivation and the cost of living crisis
- housing and/or homelessness?
Does your research use data in the UK Data Service collection?
Would you like support to develop your ideas for creating impact from your data-enhanced work and a £2000 award to help you fund your development?
If so, we invite you to apply for the next round of our Data Impact Fellows scheme.
The scheme offers:
- financial support to help you develop your idea of data impact
- an opportunity to meet and network with other Fellows to share and develop ideas
- sharing your work and ideas, and opening up discussion on our Data Impact blog
- showcasing your work and its impact through co-creating a case study
- contribute to our 2023 Data Impact event
How to apply
Applications are open and the deadline has been extended for one extra week! It will now close at 23:59 on 20 March 2023.
We aim to let you know whether you were successful or not by 31 March 2023. There are 5 awards on offer.
For those who wish you can download a PDF version of the form to view the questions all together without clicking through on the survey site. Please note applications must be submitted through the online form, emailed version of the PDF will not be accepted.
Why should you apply?
Our previous cohorts of fellows in were involved in lots of great work during their time and have gone on to a variety of research areas and careers. We asked some of them why they’d recommend applying.
Find out more about our past fellows at the links below:
“I think a significant reason to apply for the fellowship is to meet likeminded people who share a common interest in translating UK data into impact. I used the fellowship money to analyse several census releases to help a charity, supporting eastern European migrants, conduct a needs bases assessment.”
Will Shankley
“Being an impact fellow allowed me to have a platform to easily share my research and thoughts related to research within a safe space with plenty of support. It also enabled me to attend courses that I wouldn’t have entertained (due to funding).”
Anne Alarilla
“I think it gives you an impulse to explore aspects of data that might not always immediately fit a research article, but are worth keeping in mind, while at the same time training your own ‘voice’ in communicating outside of the narrow scientific community. This could be through a critical analysis of a certain concept, measure or statistic in a blog post, or by setting up an impact event with the help of the UK data service.”
Bram Vanhoutte
Further information and FAQs
If your questions aren’t answered below feel free to get in touch with us, email our Impact Manager James at james.lockwood@jisc.ac.uk.
What are the benefits of becoming a Data Impact Fellow?
- A grant of £2000 – we’ll help you figure out how to spend the money effectively!
- Face-to-face and virtual meetings with other Fellows
- Access to training and support
- Showcase your work and your impact journey to different audiences through the Data Impact blog
- Contribute to and take part in our Data Impact event (Oct/Nov 2023)
What do we ask from you?
- Join us at a face-to-face meeting in Manchester on 18 April (travel costs covered, food provided and accommodation if needed)
- Taking part in online meetings
- Get involved with Data Impact event
- Network and possibly collaborate with other Data Impact Fellows
- Write a minimum of 3 posts for the Data Impact blog
- Co-create a case study with the impact team
- A very short report at the end of the scheme about what you’ve gained from it
How do I spend the award money?
We will work with you to develop plans for spending the money, which can be used on a wide variety of options.
Once we’ve approved your ideas, you’ll be able to claim the costs back quickly from us.
Photos and videos
It’s an important part of being a Data Impact Fellow that we support you in raising your profile in different ways and for different audiences. We also want to share the success of our fellows!
To help us do this, we will need your consent for us to video you and take photos of you during face-of-face events. We will also include your headshot and a short biography on posts you create for the Data Impact blog.
High-level applicant specification
To be eligible for the Data Impact Fellows scheme you must be:
- Working for a UK based charity or university/organisation.
- Using data available via the UK Data Service in your research.
- Researching in an area related to at least one of the focus areas: poverty, deprivation, cost-of-living crisis, housing or homelessness.
- You are an early careers researcher – we are flexible when it comes to how we define early career as we want to make sure we are open for a broad range of career paths, but the criteria generally would be doctoral students, those in their first post-doctoral employment and those employed in their first research role in a registered charity.