The Nuffield Foundation is contributing £518,000 to a new programme of Fellowships for Researchers at Risk. The first priority for the Fellowships will be researchers based in Ukraine.
The programme will support researchers whose lives and livelihoods are at risk to continue their research and research collaborations from the UK for up to two years, based in universities and research institutes. It will be led by the British Academy on behalf of the UK National Academies, working in partnership with the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara). The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is contributing £3 million of government funding for the programme.
The Fellowships will provide financial support to cover salary, research expenses and living costs as well as visas. Host institutions will be asked to identify at least six months’ accommodation for the researcher and their dependents.
The Nuffield Foundation has funded research and researchers since its inception in 1943, as a core part of our mission to advance social well-being. Our founding trust deed includes a commitment to ‘scientific research and the development of education’ that continues to shape our work today.
This commitment aligns with the work of the British Academy to mobilise the humanities and social sciences to understand the world and shape a brighter future. It was Fellows of the British Academy, including William Beveridge, who helped to set up the Academic Assistance Council, a rescue mission for endangered researchers and intellectuals, which later became Cara.
Cara’s work enabled the UK to become a place of sanctuary for many German academics who were forced out of their positions by the Nazi regime and later for at-risk academics from Stalinist Russia, communist regimes in Eastern Europe, apartheid South Africa and many other troubled regions. Cara’s work continues today, worldwide; and the skills and expertise of those who have been rescued over the last 89 years have made, and continue to make, an extraordinary contribution to British scientific, cultural and intellectual life.
For enquiries, contact researchersatrisk@thebritishacademy.ac.uk.
“The Researchers at Risk Fellowship programme will provide safety and solidarity for academics and their families whose lives and livelihoods are at risk from the conflict in Ukraine. The Nuffield Foundation wholeheartedly supports this endeavour, and we are grateful to the British Academy and to Cara for their swift action to get the programme up and running so that academics at risk can continue their valuable work from the UK.” We hope that the Nuffield Foundation’s contribution to the Fellowship programme will help provide safety and solidarity for academics at risk to continue their valuable work from the UK.Professor Sir Keith Burnett, Chair of the Nuffield Foundation
Professor Julie Black, President of the British Academy, said: “I am extremely pleased that researchers at risk in Ukraine will now be able to apply to our Researchers at Risk Fellowship programme. In light of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is an urgent need to support researchers from Ukraine to find safety for themselves and their families and continue their work. These Fellowships provide a means of doing just that.
“We are proud to work on this with our colleagues at the Council for At-risk Academics (Cara) and thank the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the Nuffield Foundation, for their generous financial support. In time we hope to secure funding to broaden access to the scheme and support all at-risk researchers wherever they may be based.”
Stephen Wordsworth CMG LVO, Executive Director of Cara, said: “UK universities have a long tradition of offering sanctuary and support to their colleagues around the world whose livelihoods and dreams are being destroyed. Since the ‘pre-announcement’ of this important new Programme, many have wanted to find out more about it, so they can offer safe places and new opportunities to their Ukrainian colleagues. Now that it is being launched, I am sure that many will follow up, quickly; and, like others, I hope that it will become a permanent part of our response to tragedies like these, broadening out to offer all academics who are in danger a chance to come here to continue their work in safety and to enrich our cultural, scientific and intellectual lives, as their predecessors have done.”
