The Bristol Hub for Gambling Harms Research is launching its latest round of Research Innovation Fund Strategic Awards.
The aim of the Research Innovation Fund is to build capacity for innovative and impactful research that clearly outlines how it will benefit the public good.
The Strategic Awards will run for up to 12 months from August 2024 – July 2025. Awards are expected to be for up to £50K.
The deadline for applications is 31st May 2024.
There are more details on how to apply for the Strategic Award on our website or you can contact the Hub Research Development Associate, Dr Emily Crick.
Projects should fit with the Hub’s aims to help prevent and reduce gambling harms at all levels of society (e.g., individual, family and social networks, community and societal), deliver significant impact on the gambling research landscape and show the proactive engagement and involvement of people who are likely to benefit from the project. Projects can be co-designed with non-academic partners, but the awards must be led by academic staff or postgraduate researchers from Higher Education Institutions in the UK or internationally.
The Research Innovation Fund supports interdisciplinary research which transgresses boundaries and actively seeks to integrate and synthesise insights from one or more academic disciplines. The Research Innovation Fund aims to support researchers to work with scholars from other disciplines or under-represented disciplines e.g. Arts and Humanities.
Projects must align with at least one of our four Challenges? The four challenges are:
• Challenge 1 – Perceptions, Motivations, Decisions. What initiates harmful gambling?
• Challenge 2 – Narratives, Practice, Representation. What is the everyday practice and portrayal of gambling in social groups?
• Challenge 3 – Experience, Risk, Harm. What social inequalities exacerbate gambling harms?
• Challenge 4 – Innovation, Transition, Change. What socio-technical innovations can help combat gambling harms?
The Research Innovation Fund will also fund research into cross-cutting themes related to these four Challenges, such as inequality, vulnerability, resilience and social justice.
In the first year of the Research Innovation Fund the Hub awarded five projects:
• Enforcing ‘responsible gambling’ regulations: the (irresponsible?) impact on employees of betting and gambling outlets lead by Jo Large and Sam Kirwan (University of Bristol)
• Investigating neural signals during risky decision making lead by Paul Dodson (University of Bristol)
• The spatial signatures of gambling behaviours: access to online vs. brick-and-mortar facilities lead by Emmanouil Tranos (University of Bristol)
• A pilot study to assess the possibility of generating a quantitative analysis of the time evolution of gambling-related practices within cryptocurrency trading platforms lead by Sam Kirwan and Luca Giuggioli (University of Bristol)
• Mapping the data landscape in gambling harms research lead by Sharon Collard, Emmanouil Tranos and Jamie Evans (University of Bristol)
The Hub funded seven Strategic Award projects in 2023:
• Exploring the diffusion of gambling information impact on consumer’s behaviours, and to design a mitigating model to address harmful gambling in Namibia lead by Dr Selma Iilonga (University of Namibia)
• Gambling related harm: an urban perspective of betting shop and crime lead by Dr Oluwole Adeniyi (Nottingham Trent University)
• Live-Gam: Exploring the impact of viewing gambling on livestream platforms on the attitudes, behaviours, and engagement in young adults and adolescents towards gambling lead by Dr Glen Dighton (Swansea University)
• Understanding the relationship between stigma and gambling-related harm lead by Prof Zsolt Demetrovics, Dr Andrea Czakó and Yanisha Soborun (University of Gibraltar)
• Examining gambling harms within LGBTQ+ communities in the UK lead by Dr Reece Bush-Evans (Bournemouth University)
• Gambling harms among those under probation supervision in England and Wales lead by Dr Julie Trebilcock (Brunel University)
• Online help-seeking searches and gambling harm lead by Dr Sebastian Whiteford (Swansea University)
The Hub awarded six seedcorn projects in 2023:
• Delving into youth perspectives on in-game gambling-like elements lead by Dr Thomas Krause (University of Hohenheim, Germany)
• The role of performing arts in educating the youth against harmful gambling in Uganda lead by Dr Branco Sekalegga (Makerere University, Uganda)
• Stump the odds: developing an international network for collaborative research into gambling harms in professional cricket lead by Dr Carolyn Plateau (Loughborough University)
• Identification of and intervention in gambling effects among vulnerable groups in public universities in Kenya lead by Gregory Jumah Nyongesa (Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), Kenya)
• Scoping, consensus building and raising awareness of gambling-related harms among rugby players in Wales lead by Cerys Head (Swansea University)
• Starting conversations about harmful gambling with ethnic minority women lead by Dr Emily Arden-Close (Bournemouth University)