ESRC and DFID are pleased to announced funding for a third phase of the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research.

Outline applications are invited for projects with a Full Economic Cost (FEC) value of between £100,000 and £500,000. The duration of projects should range from a minimum of one year up to a maximum of three years. UK based researchers will be funded at 80 per cent FEC, whilst non-UK researchers will receive 100 per cent of the direct costs of the research, plus a variable overhead. The total budget for this call will be £5.3 million. Two further calls are planned in 2013 and 2014.

Research under this call should address one or more of three overarching questions:

• What approaches are most effective in enabling the poorest to exit and stay out of poverty, and under what conditions can such approaches be replicated elsewhere and at scale?
• What political and institutional conditions are associated with effective poverty reduction and  development, and what can domestic and external actors do to promote these conditions?
• What measures can be taken to reduce the risks and impact of violence and instability on the poorest and increase the effectiveness of peacebuilding, statebuilding and wider development interventions in fragile and conflict-affected situations?

Applications which are not deemed to be within the scope of the call will be rejected.

Two key cross-cutting issues are relevant to all of these overarching questions:

• Structural inequalities including those based on gender, age, disability, ethnicity, race, religion, class, educational status and spatial factors
• Measurement and metrics