Incentives and Grant Funding

by RichardMoorhead ~ October 1, 2008

I recently chaired a session at the SLS conference on grant funding. Although meant to be a workshop on how to get funding, an interesting policy issue surfaced. That was the ways in which Universities and Law Schools do, ought to, or ought not provide incentives for legal scholars to seek grant funding.

Part of the background to this is the suggestion that the replacement for the RAE (the REF) may seek to include funding as one of the basket of indicators of quality. Whilst one might expect the inclusion of funding in on Law’s basket to be resisted to protect (dominant) humanities and doctrinal approaches to legal scholarship, is there a risk that Law is seen, in research terms, as something of a cinderella subject, protected only by its popularity with student?

Does overemphasisng the importance of grant-funding threaten QR funding? Conversely, are there perversities in the ways Universities and Law School’s provide incentives for funding.

It would be interesting to hear people’s views and also, in particular to encourage the sharing of experiences around models of (good and bad) practice. For instance, I believe it is important that grant-funding is not seen as free-money to supplement QR by Heads of Schools but is properly used to buy out staff time and overhead is invested in building and maintaining capacity. One speaker at the conference reported that her institution saw having got at least one grant as key to promotion to senior lecturer level, perhaps a more controversial approach! What kinds of policy does your school have and what do you believe works?

Assuming this is allowed, feel free to post anonymously if you prefer!

Richard Moorhead, Cardiff