Creative Informatics is offering small grants for research active staff across the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh Napier University that would like to hire PhD-level research assistants for a maximum of 56 hours of work.
Applications will be accepted on a first come, first served, rolling basis. We are looking for innovative or explorative research work that will benefit the Creative Informatics research environment. A panel from Creative Informatics will review the applications at the end of each calendar month, and aim to respond to each application within 5 weeks of its submission. The first date we will review applications will be in the week commencing 4th October 2021.
Applications can be made by researchers working on a project that fits within at least one of the four broad Creative Informatics themes:
- How can Data Driven Innovation support access and engagement to new audiences and markets for the creative industries?
- How can Data Driven Innovation support the development of new modalities of experience for the creative industries?
- How can Data Driven Innovation unlock hidden value in archives and creative industries’ data sets?
- How can Data Driven Innovation reveal new business models for the creative industries?
The type of work we are interested in funding includes the following (but applicants can suggest their own topic in this space):
- Digital Platforms and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in the Creative Industries
- Future of Work in Data-Driven Creative Industries
- New Data-Driven Economies in the Creative Industries
- Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Automation in the Creative Industries
- Remote and Online Work in Creative Industries
- Beyond Economic Value in the Creative Industries
- Freelancing, Gig-Work and Platform Economies in the Creative Industries
- Sustainable Creative Practice through Data
- Creative Circular Economy and Data
- Futures of Digital Festivals and Online Performance
- FinTech, Fundraising and Digital Payments in the Creative Industries
- Remote and Hybrid Creative Practices
- Collaboration over Distance
- Creativity and Data Literacy / Computing Education
- Unlocking Value from Digitised Heritage Content
- IP ownership and Human-machine Coproduction
The purpose of these small grants is to allow research active staff to either start new, or complete ongoing research projects, where a number of hours of research assistance would be beneficial. As well as the funded PhD Research Assistant salary, we will also consider applications for consumables such as software licenses or datasets which will be crucial to undertake the Research Assistant work.
These grants are part of our initiative to support research engaging with Creative Informatics themes, building a larger research community, as well as, crucially, to provide short-term support to PhD students who may be affected by labour precarity exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Applicants are welcome to propose projects that engage with Creative Informatics activities and researchers, but do not have to do so.
For full details see here: https://creativeinformatics.org/research/small-grants-for-academics-to-hire-a-phd-research-assistant-in-data-and-the-creative-industries/