The Centre of African Studies, with the generous assistance of the A.G. Leventis
Foundation, is pleased to announce a Visiting Research Fellowships to be held at the University of Cambridge.
Applications are invited for a Visiting Research Fellowship to commence no later than
Tuesday 20 January 2026. The maximum duration of a Fellowship is six months and
is non-renewable.
Fellows will have access, by agreement, to the holdings of Faculty and Departmental
libraries, to the library of the Centre of African Studies and to the University Library.
Travel, visa, college accommodation, and maintenance costs will be paid by the
Centre on behalf of the fellow. The Centre is not able to provide additional sums for
the travel and living expenses of anyone accompanying the Fellow to Cambridge. The
sum is not subject to tax in the UK.
The aim of the Fellowships is to enable the fellows to focus on a period of research
and writing in Cambridge.
Applications are invited from candidates in all the disciplines in the humanities and
social sciences. Applicants are expected to have completed a doctoral degree before
the Fellowship start date. Preference will be given to candidates with a distinguished
research profile commensurate with their academic rank. Early- to mid-career
researchers are particularly encouraged to apply. Offers are normally made to
applicants who are based in African universities or research institutions. It is
expected that applicants would come to Cambridge to work on a project that builds
on existing research for which a period of residence in Cambridge is demonstrably
appropriate. They should present a clear and feasible plan for preparing one or more
pieces of work for publication. The initiation of a new research project will not be
ruled out where there is a realistic expectation that it could be substantially advanced
by the end of the tenure of the Fellowship.
All candidates are requested to submit a CV and research proposal each not
exceeding 2 pages in length to vf@african.cam.ac.uk. The deadline for submissions is
Friday 30 May 2025

A consortium of 3-4 international partners (one from UK, one from Brazil, one from Ghana or Nigeria, and optionally one more from any of those four countries) can apply for up to £100,000 for an Innovation Award to accelerate the testing and/or development of technologies and/or practices that promote climate-smart agriculture for sustainable food production systems in Ghana or Nigeria.

Climate-Smart Agriculture Partnership: UK-Brazil-Africa is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and delivered by Innovate UK. This brings together innovative people and organisations to promote climate-smart agriculture in Africa.

In this competition, up to £700,000 of total funding (up to £100,000 per project) is available for Innovation Awards.

These projects will start on the 1 August 2025. Projects must finish by the 28 February 2026.

What is an Innovation Award?

Projects should focus on exploring an innovation which will promote climate-smart agriculture approaches to address a challenge in food production systems in Ghana or Nigeria. Projects must demonstrate how their specified challenge will be overcome through a defined collaborative research/innovation project. All partners should be fully integrated into the project leadership. There should be equitable involvement in decision-making and setting the direction for the project, your team’s approach to achieving this should be clearly defined within your project plan. This should be reflected within the project budget, with justified distribution of resources across partners and with no single partner dominating the resource allocation without clear justification.

Projects must demonstrate a compelling business-led motivation, a focus on identifying commercial opportunities and define a clear business-related challenge or evidence of demand for innovation. Projects can be innovative either from a commercial or technical perspective.

Projects could involve, for example, the transfer of a technology or practice from one country to another, the co-development of a new technology or practice, research into a new solution or knowledge-sharing from a research base into commercial organisations.

Applications must include a registered business (of any size) as one of the partner organisations. Applications must include at least 3 partners, with 1 partner from each geography i.e. UK, Brazil, Africa (Ghana or Nigeria). An additional fourth partner from any of the four countries is allowed. Consortia must include:

• a UK-registered organisation (who is also the Administrative Lead and will submit the application)
• a Brazil-registered organisation
• either a Nigerian or Ghana-registered organisation
• an additional fourth partner organisation from any of the four countries (UK, Brazil, Ghana, Nigeria) may be included, but is not required.
  
  Read more and apply Innovation Awards for Climate-Smart Agriculture Partnerships: UK-Brazil-Africa - Innovate UK Business Connect

The 2025 Joint Transnational Call will address the SRIA theme 4 “Water and health”, in particular the sub-themes:

• 4.3 on “Innovative water tools and technologies for water quality monitoring and water treatment, remediation and disinfection”
• 4.1 on “Behaviour and effects of contaminants of emerging concern, plastics, endocrine disruptors”.

Links to other SRIA themes will be explored, in particular to the sub-themes:

• 3.3. “Groundwater management” and to the cross-cutting themes on governance,
• 7.1 “Developing methods for more efficient citizen and wider stakeholder engagement” and 7.3 “Supporting the adoption of innovations”.