Workshop Competition

The competition is open to all University of Surrey academic and research staff. PGRs are welcome to apply with a member of staff as a co-applicant. The scheme is funded by the University of Surrey.

Applications should be made before the deadline of 17 October 2025 for workshops taking place between 1 March and 31 July 2026. Applicants will be notified of the outcome in December 2025. 

The successful bids will each be awarded:

•  A grant of up to £3,500 towards the cost of running a face-to-face or a hybrid workshop. This may be used to pay for conference facilities, event assistance (further details from IAS Coordinator), programme brochure, publication of proceedings, participants’ travel and accommodation if required. We suggest you charge registration fees to raise additional funds. In addition, face-to-face workshops should have less then 40 participants. Our experience is that 35 is the ideal number.
• A grant of up to £500 towards the cost of running a virtual workshop. This may be used to pay to pay for administrative assistance and event moderation. We suggest you do not charge registration fees for online events.
• Some assistance with the administration of the meeting (Please also refer to the guidelines for general information on organising a workshop).

Organisers should only bid for the  maximum if they can fully justify that expenditure. We expect most bids to be for very much less.

The main criteria for choosing between bids will be:

• The nature of the topic — is it original, multi-disciplinary, likely to lead to significant advances?
• The likelihood of attracting international scholars.
• The link to researchers at University of Surrey.
• The impact that support from the IAS is likely to make.

Workshops should also seek to be a catalyst for excellent research culture practices. Applications should outline whether and how their plans include any of the following research culture activities:

• • support career progression, EDI principles, and open research,
  • create routes for collaboration with businesses, third sector organisations and/or government,
  • deliver new approaches to public dialogue and community-led research,
  • deliver or explore new impacts for research or innovation in a field.

Bids should consist of:

• The names and affiliations of the proposers and organisers, and of the programme committee if there is one. The main organiser should be from the University of Surrey and the meeting (if not entirely virtual) must be held on the University of Surrey campus.
• The proposed Call for contributions to the meeting, i.e. the text that will be sent to invited participants and/or distributed widely to attract contributions.
• A description of the topic of the proposed meeting, explaining clearly how it fits the criteria listed above.
• An approximate budget.  For assistance, please refer to the Budget Guidelines.
• A plan for publishing papers from the workshop and a description of any other forms of impact expected from the workshop.

Please note: Regrettably, due to the number of applications we receive, the Board is not able to provide feedback to unsuccessful applicants.

Contact

The Institute’s Coordinator, Mirela Dumić (m.dumic@surrey.ac.uk) and its Director, Nigel Gilbert (n.gilbert@surrey.ac.uk), may be consulted about the procedure for making bids.