Get involved with engage@liverpool

Posted on: 21 September 2021 by Nick Jones in 2021 Posts

engage@liverpool is a cross-faculty research methods initiative at the University. Interdisciplinary in character, it supports research across the social sciences, the arts and humanities and the natural, life and formal sciences by stimulating, encouraging, and promoting excellence and innovation in the area of research methods and methodology in particular.

engage@liverpool provide a range of services and networks designed to support and boost your research skills.

MIDAS Funding

Twice a year, engage@liverpool invites proposal from University of Liverpool academics and early career researchers for methodological innovation and development funding through its Methodological Innovation and Development Awards Scheme (MIDAS).

Methodological Innovation and Development Awards support activity in three areas:

1. Research-focused workshops/events emphasising methodological and intellectual innovation;
2. Practice- or impact-focused workshops/events seeking to engage people, communities and organisations;
3. Short-course and advanced methods training workshop development.

We particularly encourage creative proposals that seek to work across disciplinary pathways and research fields and, given our current context, speak to the problems and opportunities connected with pandemic and post-pandemic research methods and the decolonising methods agenda.

Awards will normally be between £500 and £1,500 but supplementary funding may be available beyond that where a strong case can be made for additional support. Please keep an eye out for calls via the engage newsletter.

Methods North West

engage@liverpool represents the University’s contribution to ‘Methods NorthWest’ (MNW), a research and methods collaboration involving a range of institutions across the North West of England including University of Manchester, Lancaster University and Keele University. This forms the methods and advanced training arm of the ESRC North West Doctoral Training Centre (NWDTC) and the AHRC North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (NWCDTP).

MNW Methods Sessions 2021-22: Call for Contributions

In 2020-21, MNW, working with the regional DTPs, ran a highly popular series of short online postgraduate Methods Sessions. See the archive here for an idea of the types of sessions that took place.

As we enter the new academic year, MNW are planning a second series for 2021-22 which will continue to be scheduled on Thursday at 2pm. We would welcome proposed sessions: on qualitative, quantitative, digital/computational, investigative, creative/arts and interdisciplinary methods; on adjusting methods to the realities and challenges of research after COVID-19; on writing methods for publication; and sessions dealing with new methodological developments in the DTPs’ disciplinary areas.

MNW is aware colleagues remain sorely pressed. For that reason, these sessions have been set up in ways which minimise the work those contributing them have to do in advance. The sessions which run on Thursday afternoons from 2pm can be short, discussion-based events, usually lasting an hour, with a conversational or interactive character rather than talks or presentations if contributors so decide – more traditional contributions are welcome too. To ensure preparation time for anyone who wants to deliver one of these sessions is minimised given the circumstances, last year those attending the sessions were sent something to read/watch/listen to in advance (a methods paper by the presenter, powerpoints from a previous training session, a short film or podcast they might have produced on the method, etc.), as the basis for an hour-long discussion, Q&A or trouble shooting session. The format and focus can be adapted as contributors see fit, however, and more time can be allocated if needed. All sessions will be promoted by the methods initiatives at the DTP institutions as well as by MNW, the DTPs and other bodies where relevant.

If you would like to run a session or further information, please send an e-mail to enagge@liverpool.ac.uk. If you know of any colleagues who might be interested, please feel free to circulate this information to them.

MNW Collaborative Innovation Grants

In October, March and June each academic year, Methods North West puts out calls for proposals for funding under its Collaborative Innovation Grants scheme.

Applications are invited from staff and postgraduate researchers from across the four contributing institutions for up to £2000 to cover all or part of the costs of projects, events, initiatives and symposia that will support cutting-edge developments in research methods across the North West. Projects must include participants from at least two of those institutions and should be genuinely collaborative and persuasively innovative. Whilst the project can be led by staff or students it should be meaningfully inclusive of PGR students. Please keep an eye out for these calls.

National Centre for Research Methods

It is also the University’s primary point of interface with the UK’s National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM), now as a Centre Partner via NCRM Liverpool. The NCRM runs an active calendar of research-based events, and are always keen to include new activities.

If you would like to deliver a session on new or innovative research practices you are involved in, please contact the engage@liverpool team in the first instance.

Find out about all events currently available here.

Get involved

If you’re new to the University, make sure you’re signed up to receive news and updates about engage@liverpool.

It's a great way for researchers to keep themselves, and their research students, abreast of cutting-edge research methods through events organised in Liverpool and elsewhere: the newsletter brings this together in one place. Sign up here.

The team are always keen to hear from and work with people from across the University and beyond, so please feel free to get in touch with us at mailto:engage@liverpool.ac.uk or via Twitter.