I recently invited myself along to Grants with Coffee a school initiative that’s been running in School of Human Development and Health (HDH) for 4 years and is just starting up in School of Clinical and Experimental Sciences (CES). Grants with Coffee are informal sessions held in person for an hour each month (with the ability to join on Teams too) where researchers at any stage of their career can pitch a grant proposal or idea and get immediate, honest feedback from attendees.
As the name suggests, coffee and tea are provided (with donuts and fruit too). Presentations are via a whiteboard and discussions are conversational (no PowerPoints!!). Each session has one presenter, and researchers can sign up for a spot throughout the year.
Attendees are from a range of disciplines/levels across the school, with sessions led by the Deputy Head of School, Research (DHoSR). At the HDH session I attended, Rohan Lewis was joined by:
- the Associate Dean for Research
- senior academics with experience of grant body panel membership
- mid-career and early-career researchers
- postgraduate researchers
- members of the Research Funding Team (Research and Innovation Services)
In short, anyone is welcome. Though sign-up is required beforehand for catering.
Speaking to DHoSRs Rohan Lewis (HDH) and Brigitte Vollmer (CES) both explained the importance of supporting researchers to secure grant income and the benefits of being able to feedback on ideas in an immediate and very informal way. Grants with Coffee provides cross-disciplinary expertise and constructive feedback for researchers in a collegiate setting, without the need for e-mail trails and consensus. Attendees like hearing about others’ research ideas and are glad to be able to offer insights to colleagues to help strengthen bids. (and to share their own stories of rejection/bid refinement too!)
At the session I attended Robin Rumney presented his proposal for a project looking at novel biomaterials for bone repair. Robin was looking to make the jump from small/medium size grants to bigger, longer-term grants and had recently submitted a bid to UKRI. The bid hadn’t been successful, and Robin was seeking feedback on his proposal and ideas on improvements for future bids. I asked Robin how he found the experience:
Grants with Coffee, you have a broader audience there. It's not just the specific people you work with on a day-to-day basis you get immediate discussion between different people that wouldn't otherwise happen.
Robin’s main takeaway was that Grants with Coffee offered the interdisciplinary collaboration and honest, live discussion that he just wouldn’t get had he been e-mailing around asking colleagues for advice. The session helped Robin understand how people outside his specific field perceived his ideas (important since panel members will not necessarily be from your discipline!) and he appreciated the open, honest feedback he received as it highlighted areas he had missed (e.g. emphasising the ‘novel’, which he had taken as read!) and helped him refine his proposal. Robin has since signed up to present another project idea at a HDH Grants with Coffee session in June.