All communities are listed below in date order (newest first), and can be searched using key words or fund type.
Our “Featured Communities” are from the most recent round of Generator funding.
Our Communities
Our communities
The GW4 Building Communities Programme aims to build research and innovation communities of scale and capability, delivering a step change in world-class research that could not be achieved by one of the institutions alone. The Programme has two funding schemes:
- The annual Generator Fund which awards GW4 communities up to £20K for 6 month projects (launched in 2020). This replaced the Initiator (up to £20K for 5 months) and Accelerator (up to £75K for 8 months) funding schemes, which ran from 2014 – 2019.
- The Development Awards which support new, and advance existing, collaborations across GW4 by funding single activities or resources with up to £5K. This is a rolling scheme, with no closing date.
More details of both schemes, and how to apply, can be found at the links above.
Building Communities funding supports both the creation of new GW4 communities and the development of the strongest ideas emerging from our existing communities, and is open to any academic area. To date, the GW4 Alliance has invested over £3.4M in 125 collaborative research communities, which have generated £87M in research income. This means that for every £1 GW4 spends on collaborative research communities, GW4 captures an impressive £25 in external research awards.
Research integrity
The GW4 Alliance has adopted the Russell Group Research Integrity Statement of cooperation in cross-institutional research misconduct allegations, which aims to support the efforts of researcher communities to foster research integrity (also known as good practice in research or the responsible conduct of research).
Explore our communities
Featured Communities
All-solid-state lithium-ion batteries with cellulose enhanced solid polymer electrolytes (ALLIANCE)
STEM
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Young people’s self-harm and suicidal behaviour: Developing qualitative research to understand the influence of context and culture
HASS
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Fabrication and Testbed Network for Next-Generation Optical Brain Computer Interfacing
STEM
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Physical, psychological and social factors influencing musculoskeletal injury and wellbeing in Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professional students
STEM
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177 results found
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Funds
Types
Functional Materials Far From Equilibrium
Initiator
Overview
This collaboration brings together all GW4 universities to nucleate a new community that will address an important bottleneck in the development of novel technological devices: the nonequilibrium evolution of material microstructure and its impact on macroscopic material behaviour.
Community lead
University of Bath: Johannes Zimmer (PI), Chris Bowen
University of Bristol: Isaac Chenchiah
Cardiff University: Nicolas Dirr
University of Exeter: David Wright
Awarded
October 2014
Large Scale Brain Networks in Health and Disease
Initiator
Overview
We aim to establish an active research community across GW4 to stimulate research collaborations that integrate experimental and clinical approaches with mathematical and computational modelling of brain networks.
Community lead
University of Bath: Roland Jones
University of Bristol: Matt Jones
Cardiff University: Vincenzo Crunelli
University of Exeter: Marc Goodfellow (PI)
Awarded
October 2014
GW4 Medieval Studies
Accelerator
Overview
This project has established a GW4 Medieval Studies community that is vibrant, productive and creative with a shared vision. Its aim is to lead in the field. There are various on-going shared initiatives to develop the research culture in Medieval Studies.
Community lead
University of Bristol: Carolyn Muessig (PI), Ian Wei, Beth Williamson, Helen Fulton (replacement PI)
Cardiff University: Bronach Kane
University of Exeter: James Clark
Awarded
October 2014
GW4 Imaging Network
Initiator
Overview
This community aimed to create a GW4 network of inter-disciplinary expertise to promote, inspire and support quantitative image analysis across the disciplines, in each institution, and to promote GW4 scientific imaging at the international level.
Community lead
University of Bath: Silvia Munoz-Descalzo, Jim Caunt
University of Bristol: Mark Jepson
Cardiff University: Jim Murray, Peter Watson, Joaquin de Navascues Melero
University of Exeter: Michael Deeks (PI), Jacqueline Christmas, George Littlejohn, Jeremy Metz
Awarded
October 2014
Political, Social, Institutional & Cultural Dimensions of Risk & Security
Initiator
Overview
We aimed to bring together GW4 researchers to examine the analytical, political, social, institutional and cultural dimensions of risk in contemporary security discourse and practice.
Community lead
University of Bath: David Galbreath
University of Bristol: Tim Edmunds
Cardiff University: Christian Bueger
University of Exeter: Doug Stokes (PI), Sir Paul Newton
Awarded
November 2014
Building a GW4 Clinical Academic Training Community
Initiator
Overview
By creating a vibrant cohort of young talented clinical academics across GW4 we will significantly enhance our collective abilities to translate our basic biomedical and population health research into an impact on patient care.
Community lead
University of Bath: Stephen Ward
University of Bristol: Jeremy Tavaré (PI)
Cardiff University: Paul Morgan
University of Exeter: Angela Shore
Awarded
May 2015
Centre for Corporate Governance & Social Responsibility (CGSR)
Initiator
Overview
Our aim was to establish a world-leading multi-disciplinary research centre, The Centre for Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility (CGSR) across the Alliance.
Community lead
University of Bath: Ian Tonks
University of Bristol: Paula Hill (PI)
Cardiff University: Jason Xiao
University of Exeter: Rajesh Tharyan
Awarded
May 2015
Controlling Nucleation & Growth to Deliver Novel Materials Functionality
Accelerator
Overview
The aim of our interdisciplinary community is to take an integrative approach combining theoretical modelling, experiments and simulations to advance the state of the art in nucleation and crystallization theory.
Community lead
University of Bath: Johannes Zimmer (PI)
University of Bristol: Isaac Chenchiah
Cardiff University: Stefano Leoni
University of Exeter: David Wright
Awarded
May 2015
Dying with Reduced Agency – People, Places, Principles & Policy
Accelerator
Overview
Demographic, technological, organisational, political and social changes create new challenges at the end of life. This GW4 community is focused on understanding and improving the end of life for the growing number of people with reduced agency (e.g. linked to dementia, disorders of consciousness or frailty/chronic conditions in advanced old age).
Community lead
University of Bath: Jeremy Dixon
University of Bristol: Richard Huxtable
Cardiff University: Jenny Kitzinger (PI)
University of Exeter: Linda Clare
Awarded
May 2015
GW4 Bio-X
Initiator
Overview
GW4 Bio-X exists to identify, frame and address the ‘unanswerable’ biological questions using ‘breaking’ and ‘in development’ methods, models and tools from the physical sciences. Our community is in place to make GW4 the national powerhouse in innovative, molecular bioscience and to develop novel capacity and capability.
Community lead
University of Bath: Christopher R Pudney (PI)
University of Bristol: Adrian Mulholland
Cardiff University: Rudolf Allemann
University of Exeter: Christian Soeller
Awarded
May 2015