The British Academy has recently announced the next deadline for their popular small research grants scheme, which funds work in the social sciences and humanities:

British Academy – Small Research Grants

The next deadline will be March 15th 2009. This is a change from previous years, when deadlines have been in January, April and October.

Small grants can be used to fund initial project planning, pilot studies, workshops, travel and data collection in the UK or abroad. They can also be used to fund part of a larger research project, and in fact the application forms ask for both the duration of the British Academy-funded portion of research and the length of the research as a whole.

In addition to the small grants, it’s also worth checking the “special funds” which are administered by the British Academy:

British Academy – Special Funds

These cover a mixture of smaller awards – from £500 to £2,500 – which are targeted at specific research areas. For example, the Neil Ker Memorial Fund is dedicated to the study of Western medieval manuscripts, while the Stein-Arnold Exploration Fund encourages “research on the antiquities or historical geography or early history or arts of those parts of Asia which come within the sphere of the ancient civilisations of India, China, and Iran, including Central Asia”.

These funding streams use the same British Academy small grant form and work to the same deadline. You should check the eligibility requirements carefully, as some of them contain further restrictions on the kind of work the award can fund.