Purpose of the awards
Remit of the awards
Eligibility requirements
Award amount and duration
Patient and Public Involvement
Apply
Adjudication
Our interview panel
If you have any questions, please email research@stroke.org.uk and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Deadline
Currently closed for applicants.
The funding call for Postgraduate Fellowship applications is due to open on 6 November 2023. The closing date for applications is 5 pm on 30 January 2024. Interviews will be held on 27 June 2024.
Purpose of the awards
Postgraduate Fellowship (PGF):
This award is for candidates who do not have a clinical background. The Stroke Association's research strategy aims to increase the UK funding base and capacity for stroke research across the full stroke care pathway. These fellowships are aimed at the stroke research leaders of the future. Postgraduate Fellowships are intended to provide the necessary skills and training for the development of an independent career in stroke research, and to allow candidates the opportunity to obtain a postgraduate qualification (MPhil or PhD).
Clinical-Academic Postgraduate Fellowship (CPGF):
We wish to embed research within clinical stroke care, and this award focusses on supporting capacity for clinical academic roles in stroke. Clinical academic roles provide an opportunity to close the gap between research and practice, whereby a reciprocal relationship can occur to improve the implementation of evidence-based practice, and to use real world clinical issues as a basis for the development of research projects. There is currently a lack of formalised clinical academic career pathways for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), and in alignment with the Health Education England (HEE) strategy, we wish to demonstrate a commitment to formalising this pathway.
The Postgraduate Clinical-Academic Fellowship (CPGF) is aimed at the future clinical-academic leaders in stroke. CPGFs are intended to provide the necessary skills and training for the development of an independent career in stroke research, whilst remaining embedded in clinical practice, and to allow candidates the opportunity to obtain a postgraduate qualification (MPhil or PhD).
Remit of the awards
The Stroke Association supports fellows who plan to conduct stroke research into clinical and applied health, including social care research. This includes research that is conducted to answer specific questions relating to day-to-day practice in health services or community settings, and which has the potential to have an impact on the health or well-being of people affected by stroke. A clear trajectory to patient benefit is essential.
For the CPGF, the Stroke Association wishes to support fellows who have forged a clinical career in stroke, and have developed their own research question(s) from clinical experience.
The Fellow's proposed project should align with the priorities for stroke research, as set by the 2021 James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership for Stroke. Further details can be found on the Priority Setting Partnership page.
We welcome applications from Allied Health Professionals and Nurses, Psychologists, Pharmacists, and other applied researchers including but not limited to: Implementation Scientists, Health Economists, Digital health and Computer Scientists.
The Stroke Association will not fund basic or pre-clinical research through its wholly-funded Postgraduate and Postdoctoral Fellowship schemes.
This does not apply to our joint Clinical Fellowship programme with the Association of British Neurologists (ABN), which are open to research across the whole pathway.
Eligibility requirements
The eligibility requirements for each award can be found in the postgraduate award guidance document.
Please contact the Research Team if you are unsure of, or have any queries regarding, your eligibility for this award.
Award amount and duration
PGF:
The stipend funding available is in table 1.0 below, subject to the fellow making satisfactory progress. Awards will be made for two years initially, with a discretionary extension for the third year. This funding is for the candidate's stipend, and an additional total of £18,000 per year spread accordingly over the duration of the PhD will be awarded to cover research costs, tuition fees, and travel. Further information can be found in the postgraduate award guidance document.
| 24/25 | 25/26 | 26/27 | Research costs | Year 1 total | Year 2 total | Year 3 total | |
| 23/24 PGFs | £19,478.97 | £20,452.92 | £21,475.56 | £18,000 | £37,479 | £38,453 | £39,476 |
| In London | £21,683.97 | £22,768.17 | £23,906.58 | £18,000 | £39,684 | £40,768 | £41,907 |
CPGF:
The CPGF is a personal award and will fund the salary costs of the fellow for their research activity, their PhD tuition fees, and the costs of research training and development. The salary costs for time spent on research activities will be paid to the fellow's host institution, and it is expected that the host institution will continue to pay the salary for any of the remaining time spent on clinical activity. In addition to salary and salary costs, a total of £18,000 per year spread accordingly over the PhD will be awarded to cover research costs, tuition fees, and travel.
Funding for research time will be matched to a clinical salary (plus salary costs) up to the top of Band 7 AFC pay scale if employed by the NHS, or equivalent limit in other organisations. Evidence of the Fellow's existing salary will be required to confirm the salary costs. Further information can be found in the postgraduate award guidance document.
Patient and Public Involvement
We expect applicants to have involved people affected by stroke in the planning and development stages of their funding application, and to continue to do so should their application be successful. This involvement should be meaningful, and people affected by stroke should have a real opportunity to contribute to your research.
In the application you will be asked how you have involved public and/or patients in this research and/or the application, how you will involve public and/or patients in this research going forward, what the impacts and benefits will be for them (short and/or longer term) and how you plan to disseminate this work to them.
We are able to offer you advice or answer questions you may have about involvement. If you would like to us to contact people affected by stroke to gain feedback on your proposal we can help, however please beware that we will not support any request made to us less than eight weeks prior to the application deadline.
Visit our Patient and Public Involvement in Research page to find out more about how we can help you to involve people affected by stroke in your work.
Apply
Please read our Postgraduate Guidance document and Postgraduate Conditions of Award before beginning an application:
Applications must be submitted to our online award management system.
To begin an application, please create an account by clicking 'register' in the top right-hand corner. If you have previously interacted with us, then your email address may already be in the system. If you find that this is the case, please click on 'Login' and 'Forgot password?' The system will then email you instructions to set yourself a password.
After you have logged in, please click on 'Application Portal' at the top of the page, then select which award you would like to start an application for, from the 'Click here to start an application' search bar in the blue panel on this page.
This system should work on all major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge, but we would not recommend using Internet Explorer below version 9.
If you have any issues with the system or have any feedback, please email us at research@stroke.org.uk.
Adjudication
Postgraduate Fellowships are awarded on the recommendation of a panel made up of members of the Stroke Association's Research Awards Pool and our Stroke Voices in Research group using the system of expert external peer review, and a candidate interview with the panel.
Interviews will be held on 27 June 2024. You'll be informed two weeks before whether you have been shortlisted for an interview.
Our interview panel
Members of our Research Awards Pool (RAP) are chosen based on the expertise required on adjudication panels. To avoid conflicts of interest, any RAP member applying for funding in any of our funding rounds will take no part in the adjudication of that round. All RAP members sign up to our RAP Code of Practice. All applications are sent out for external peer review and all reviewers sign our Confidentiality and Conflicts of Interest Policy.
If you are a research expert and would like to register your interest in becoming a member of our Research Awards Pool, please email us at research@stroke.org.uk.
Success rates for Postgraduate Fellowship awards
You can find details of the number of applications received and the number funded for this stream in recent years here: