UK SBS CR150015ESRC Evaluation of the Transformative Research Scheme

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is currently running a third call through its Transformative Research Scheme. The ESRC broadly defines transformative research as involving pioneering theoretical and methodological innovation, the novel application of theory and methods in new contexts, and/or research based on the engagement of unusual disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives.

1. The Scheme aims to provide a stimulus for genuinely transformative research ideas at the frontiers of the social sciences, enabling research which challenges current thinking to be supported and developed. The expectation is that the Scheme will encourage novel developments of social science enquiry, and support research activity that entails an element of risk because of its ambitious and novel design. Indeed, by funding research that entails risk of this nature, the ESRC accepts that it is possible that some of research funded through this scheme might experience some degree of failure. The ESRC is commissioning a two-phase evaluation of the Transformative Research Scheme.