BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants are a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust funding scheme offering up to £10,000 over one to 24 months to postdoctoral scholars, including independent scholars, ordinarily resident in the UK. Unlike most UKRI council grants, the scheme sits outside the Full Economic Costing (fEC) regime and is administered through the British Academy’s own Flexi-Grant portal, not the UKRI Funding Service.
The British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme is one of the British Academy’s highest-volume programmes, making awards to academics working at around 100 institutions across the UK. It is funded as a public-private partnership between the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the Leverhulme Trust and the Wellcome Trust, alongside several named Special Funds. For humanities and social science researchers who sit outside the large UKRI research councils, it is one of the few nationally competitive routes to discrete, project-defined funding.
This guide sets out who can apply, what the money can and cannot be spent on, how reporting works, and — critically — how the scheme’s rules diverge from EPSRC, MRC and the wider UKRI funding architecture.
- What are the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants?
- Who is eligible to apply?
- What can the budget cover — and what is excluded?
- How does reporting and compliance work?
- How does this compare with EPSRC, MRC and the UKRI new funding model?
- Answer-first Q&A
- Implications for humanities and social science applicants
What are the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants?
The BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants scheme is a competitive award covering the direct expenses of a clearly defined humanities or social science research project. Awards are worth up to £10,000 and are tenable for between one and 24 months, with a minimum award of £500 for a discrete, identifiable piece of work.
According to the British Academy’s own scheme guidance, funding is intended to cover initial project planning and development, direct research costs such as travel, subsistence and specialist research assistance, and the advancement of research through workshops, conferences or visits to and from partner scholars. It is explicitly not a personal fellowship or salary-replacement scheme.
Who is eligible to apply?
Eligibility is narrower than many applicants assume, but it is also more open in one important respect: independent scholars are welcome.
- Applicants must be postdoctoral scholars or equivalent and ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom.
- Applications need the approval of the applicant’s employing institution where one exists, but are not restricted to a particular grade (Lecturer, Professor or otherwise).
- Independent scholars without an institutional affiliation may apply directly, selecting “independent scholar” in the Flexi-Grant portal.
- Co-applicants may be based anywhere in the world, provided the Principal Applicant is ordinarily resident in the UK.
- Postgraduate students are not eligible — this is a postdoctoral-and-above scheme.
From the 2026 application round, the British Academy introduced a distinct submission window for independent scholars, who must now submit at least five working days before the round closing date; late submissions in this category are not processed. This is a genuine procedural detail that trips up first-time independent applicants, who often assume the standard deadline applies to them.
What can the budget cover — and what is excluded?
Because the scheme sits outside UKRI’s Full Economic Costing framework, the budget rules are simpler than a typical research council application, but also more restrictive in specific ways.
| Allowed | Not allowed |
|---|---|
| Travel and subsistence for fieldwork or archive visits | Replacement teaching costs |
| Specialist research assistance | Payment in lieu of salary |
| Workshop, conference and collaboration costs tied to the funded project | Computer equipment/hardware |
| Project planning and development costs | Attendance-only conference fees with no defined research objective |
Applications purely to organise or attend a third-party conference — the kind of activity once covered by the Academy’s discontinued Conference Support Grant and Overseas Conference Grant schemes — will not be considered unless directly tied to disseminating results from the funded project. Grants are also not intended to fund UK–overseas scholarly interchange where there is no defined programme of activity behind it.
How does reporting and compliance work?
Reporting obligations scale with the size and simplicity of the award rather than mirroring the multi-year monitoring cycle of a UKRI standard grant. Award-holders submit progress and financial reporting through Flexi-Grant, and extensions to the tenure of an award (up to the 24-month ceiling) can be requested for a defined set of reasons set out in the British Academy’s current guidance for grant-holders.
Because the £10,000 ceiling is a direct-cost allocation to the award-holder rather than an institutional fEC award, host institutions typically have a lighter administrative burden than for a UKRI grant — there is no 20% institutional contribution to manage, and no Je-S or UKRI Funding Service record to maintain. This is a material difference for research administration teams that otherwise triage every award through the same fEC costing workflow.
How does this compare with EPSRC, MRC and the UKRI new funding model?
Researchers moving between disciplines often assume every UK grant sits inside the same UKRI application and costing system. BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants are a useful case study in why that assumption fails.
| Feature | BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants | EPSRC (UKRI) | MRC (UKRI) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administering body | British Academy (with Leverhulme Trust, DSIT, Wellcome Trust) | UK Research and Innovation | UK Research and Innovation |
| Application portal | Flexi-Grant (British Academy’s own system) | UKRI Funding Service | UKRI Funding Service |
| Typical award scale | Up to £10,000, direct costs only | Responsive-mode/standard grants, typically far larger | Responsive-mode/standard grants, typically far larger |
| Full Economic Costing (fEC) | Not covered by fEC — award is direct-cost only | fEC applies; UKRI funds 80% of the Full Economic Cost, institution covers the remainder | fEC applies; UKRI funds 80% of the Full Economic Cost, institution covers the remainder |
| Independent scholar eligible | Yes, with a dedicated submission window | Generally requires an eligible host institution | Generally requires an eligible host institution |
UKRI’s own reform programme — often referred to informally as the UKRI new funding model — has spent recent years consolidating research council applications onto the single UKRI Funding Service (replacing the legacy Joint Electronic Submission, or Je-S, system) and harmonising grant terms and conditions across councils. BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants sit deliberately outside this consolidation: they are not migrating to the UKRI Funding Service, and they retain the Academy’s own Flexi-Grant portal and a distinct, non-fEC costing model. For research administrators building a single institutional workflow across funders, that is the single most consequential operational fact in this comparison.
Answer-first Q&A
How much can a BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant cover?
Awards run from a minimum of £500 up to a maximum of £10,000, tenable for between one and 24 months. The award funds a single, clearly defined piece of research with an identifiable outcome, not an open-ended programme of work or a personal fellowship.
Who is eligible for BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants?
Postdoctoral scholars or equivalent who are ordinarily resident in the UK, including independent scholars without institutional affiliation. Co-applicants can be based anywhere, but the Principal Applicant must be UK-resident, and postgraduate students are not eligible.
Are BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants covered by Full Economic Costing?
No. The scheme is explicitly outside the fEC regime that governs most UKRI research council grants. The £10,000 ceiling is a direct-cost award to the researcher, not an institutional fEC settlement, which removes the usual 80/20 UKRI-institution cost split entirely.
What can BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant funding not be used for?
Funds cannot cover replacement teaching, payment in lieu of salary, or computer equipment. Grants also exclude stand-alone conference attendance or UK–overseas interchange that lacks a defined research objective tied to the funded project.
Implications for humanities and social science applicants
The practical takeaway for applicants and research administration offices is that BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants require a genuinely different compliance checklist from an EPSRC or MRC application. Institutions whose research administration workflows route every funder through the same fEC costing template risk misclassifying this scheme — either by over-costing an award that is meant to be direct-cost only, or by missing the independent-scholar submission window introduced for the 2026 round.
As UKRI consolidates research council funding onto a single portal and cost model, schemes like BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants remain a deliberate exception — and, for humanities and social science researchers, an opportunity: a low-friction, direct-cost route to project funding that never touches the UKRI Funding Service. Teams that keep a funder-specific map of eligibility, costing and reporting rules, rather than one generic template, turn that simplicity into an advantage rather than a compliance gap.
