Data Impact Fellows 2025-26

A group of Data Impact Fellows

 

Are you an early career researcher in the academic or VCSE sector?

Is your research related to one of these themes:

  • children and young people
  • mental health and wellbeing.

Does your research use data in the UK Data Service collection?

Would you like support to develop your ideas for creating impact from your data-enhanced work and a £2000 award to help you fund your development?

If so, we invite you to apply for the next round of our Data Impact Fellows scheme.

The scheme offers:

  • Financial support to help you develop your idea of data impact.
  • An opportunity to meet and network with other Fellows to share and develop ideas.
  • Sharing your work and ideas, and opening up discussion on our Data Impact blog.
  • Showcasing your work and its impact through co-creating a case study.
  • Contribute to our impact events.

The scheme will run from January 2025 to December 2026.

How to apply

Applications opened on 30 September 2024 and close at 23:59 on 18 November 2024. We’ll let you know whether you were successful or not by mid December 2024.

Submit your application.

Why should you apply?

Our previous cohorts of fellows in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2023 were involved in lots of great work during their time and have gone on to a variety of research areas and careers. We asked some of them why they’d recommend applying:

 

“Being a UK data impact fellow has directly changed my practice and expanded my networks (and funding and job opportunities), leading to better impact in the UK and global food system.”

Christian Reynolds, 2019 Data Impact Fellow. Reader in Food Policy Senior Tutor for Research at the Centre for Food Policy, City University, London.

 

“Participating in this scheme has been an incredibly enriching experience, offering me professional growth to enhance the impact of my research.”

Niloofar Shoari, 2023 Data Impact Fellow. Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Child Health, University College London (UCL)

 

“Through the scheme, I had the opportunity to meet with a diverse group of early career academics, with backgrounds and research topics that were very different to mine, but facing similar data challenges, and even looking at similar data. Some of the connections made through this scheme have already opened new avenues for collaboration which I am now actively pursuing.”

Tasos Papastylianou, 2023 Data Impact Fellow. Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Health and Wellbeing, at the University of Essex

Further information and FAQs 

If your questions aren’t answered below feel free to get in touch with us, email our Research impact and engagement manager, James, at james.lockwood@jisc.ac.uk.

What are the benefits of becoming a Data Impact Fellow?

  • A grant of £2000 – we’ll help you figure out how to spend the money effectively! 
  • Face-to-face and virtual meetings with other Fellows. 
  • Access to training and support. 
  • Showcase your work and your impact journey to different audiences through the Data Impact blog. 
  • Contribute to and take part in our Data Impact events.

What do we ask from you? 

  • Commitment to attending a face-to-face meeting in Birmingham on 28 Jan 2025 (travel & accommodation costs covered as needed).
  • Commitment to quarterly online meetups. These will be a maximum of 1 hour and arranged to suit most people. They will be a mix between training & support, networking etc.
  • Commitment to a minimum of three Data Impact blog posts:
    • One will be an introduction to you, you research etc. and will be expected by mid/late April 2025.
    • The other two will be on topics and areas of your choice/interests.
    • The second post will due by the end of October 2025.
    • The third post will be shared with us and published by June 2026.
  • A short report at the end of the scheme about what you’ve gained from it. 

How do I spend the award money? 

We will work with you to develop plans for spending the money, which can be used on a wide variety of options. 

Once we’ve approved your ideas, you’ll be able to claim the costs back quickly from us. 

Photos and videos 

It’s an important part of being a Data Impact Fellow that we support you in raising your profile in different ways and for different audiences. We also want to share the success of our Fellows! 

To help us do this, we will need your consent for us to video you and take photos of you during face-of-face events. We will also include your headshot and a short biography on posts you create for the Data Impact blog. 

High-level applicant specification

To be eligible for the Data Impact Fellows scheme you must be:

  • Working for a UK based charity or university/organisation.
  • Using data available via the UK Data Service in your research.
  • Researching in an area related to at least one of the focus areas: poverty, deprivation, cost-of-living crisis, housing or homelessness.
  • You are an early careers researcher – we are flexible when it comes to how we define early career as we want to make sure we are open for a broad range of career paths, but the criteria generally would be doctoral students, those in their first post-doctoral employment and those employed in their first or second research role in a registered charity.

Please do get in touch if you have any queries on your eligibility.

Timings of the programme

  • Monday 30 September 2024 – Call for applications opens.
  • Monday 18 November 2024 – Application deadline.
  • Mid December – Applicants notified of success.
  • Mid Jan 2025 – Winners publicly announced via a Data Impact blog post (including short bio and photo of each winner).
  • Tuesday 28 Jan 2025 – Initial face-to-face meeting for Impact Fellows – in Birmingham, exact location TBC. Travel & accommodation (as needed) will be covered.