3.2

Vitae Innovate

Vitae is the national organisation championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education institutions and research institutes. CRAC runs Vitae on behalf of the UK Research Councils.

Vitae Innovate aims to promote innovative approaches and projects in the field of the personal, professional and career development of researchers. It includes a funding stream to support innovative projects. In the 2009 round, funding of up to a total of £100,000 was allocated.

The quality and potential value to researcher development that was contained in some of the proposals will allow Vitae to explore taking forward some projects within other Vitae workstreams, such as our resources development or research projects.  Details of Vitae Innovate 2010

Projects which have been funded to date include:

Open research: the application of e-knowledge tools in researcher careers training and development
The Open University (OU)
£20,000

Essential business skills for the low carbon economy: a bespoke programme for researchers
University of East Anglia
£15,725

Researcher-led initiatives: generating frameworks for promoting a postgraduate researcher stake in researcher development
National Union of Students
£9,900

Building impact into social science research
University of Leeds
£9,750

The research impact agenda and early career development for historians: a pilot study
History Research Wales
£8,516

Facilitating research as a creative process
Imperial College London
£7,160

Win-Win: developing the transferable skills of research staff through mentoring
The University of Sussex
£4,500

Funding was given to ideas and projects which were genuinely aiming to discover, try or set up something new. The aim of the fund was to enable projects to happen which were not currently planned or likely to take place under existing funding or provision for supporting researchers. Projects which the panel considered to be either an adaptation on or continuation of previous or current work were not funded.