Pool Engagement in European Research - PEER
Although the main SIRE activities budget has now been exhausted SIRE has continued to be given an annual PEER award that is designed to help academics in Scotland obtain more research funding from Europe. The money is intended to be used to meet some of the costs of travel, staff time, admin etc. involved in building European networks which might potentially lead to a funding bid under the EU Framework programme. To date we have maintained a very good track record of spending PEER funds which has enabled us to attract supplementary PEER funding recycled from the underspent funds of other pools.
Deadline for submitting bids is 30 January 2017: – £13,334 is available covering eligible expenditures from August 1st 2015 to July 31st 2017. This extra tranche will need to be spent by 31st of July 2017. Requests for funding should, in the first instance, be submitted to info@sire.ac.uk, by e-mail before the deadline of 30/1/2017.
The money can support a number of more preliminary seed corn activities in addition to more directly supporting the later stages of development of funding applications under the EU Framework programme.
Some examples that SFC gives are:
- establishing network connections;
- showcasing skills and capabilities;
- participating in specific networking activities for both policy influencing and project preparation.
Considerations regarding the application
Applications, which need be no more than one page in length, should provide a brief outline of the proposed activities/project for which funding is sought and an indication of the nature of the costs to be covered (e.g. staff/admin time; travel and subsistence). Once approved written notification will be issued on how to proceed for raising the invoice.
Consistent with the aims of PEER, bids should involve either the preparation of new funding proposals under the EU Framework programme; or networking and showcasing activities, which might provide the groundwork for such a proposal.
Eligible costs include:
- all additional costs incurred as a result of engagement in the EU Framework process including staff time /services employed specifically for that purpose;
- travel and subsistence costs may be included for the staff of partner institutions and should be calculated at the rates normally applied by the institution.
SIRE is unlikely to fund:
- attendance at routine project meetings for which funding should be available under the EU project;
- giving a staff seminar at some European University;
- attending and presenting a paper at the European Meeting of a general annual Conference, with no more specific networking activities.
- Note that travel and subsistence costs for NON-ACADEMIC partner organisations or businesses is excluded.