Author: Sarah Crabtree

The Collaboration and Innovation Grant is a new funding scheme, awarding up to £10,000 for the formation of practice-led, cross-sector teams to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration between sectors, from which experimental public engagement activity will emerge.  

There will be an application webinar on Monday 9 March, 2-3pm, to find out more. Booking here: Centre for Public Engagement Practice Booking Form – Form 

For questions relating to the Collaboration and Innovation Grant, please email cpep@sas.ac.uk. 

Being Human Festival is the UK’s national festival of the humanities and runs from 5 – 14 November with the theme Crossroads. The 2026 call for applications offers multiple funding pathways and one unfunded pathway. 

There will be an application webinar on Wednesday 25 February, 11am – 12pm, to find out more. Sign up here 
Find out about Being Human Festival 2026 

For questions relating to Being Human Festival, please email beinghuman@sas.ac.uk. 

We are looking for volunteers to support research into a questionnaire that helps people with liver disease tell their doctors about their symptoms and concerns. Your input will help people with liver disease express their views and improve healthcare for many people who often face significant health inequalities. We would like to hear from people who live with chronic liver disease, or who have experience of caring for someone with advanced liver disease. You will attend a 30 minute online Teams meeting to discuss a new medical questionnaire. In the meeting you will be asked to give your opinion on whether the questions that are being developed are clear and understandable. All communication will be through email. We offer a £10 gift voucher to say thank you for your contribution. If you are interested in supporting this project please email hyeg19@hyms.ac.uk before 23/2/26. Thank you. Dr Beth Gulliksen (PhD student at Hull York Medical School)

The RSC Outreach Fund is open for 2026 – offering up to £10,000 to support exciting and creative chemical science engagement activities across the UK and ROI.
We fund a broad range of projects that connect communities from all backgrounds with the chemical sciences.

If you work with or have an idea to engage schools, community groups, families, public audiences or underserved communities, this fund could help support your work or bring a brand‑new idea to life. Or if you are looking for inspiration – take a look at the RSC Education Outreach Hub

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year, with deadlines at 5pm (UK time) on 6 March, 5 June, and a final closing deadline at 5pm on 2 October 2026.
If anyone has any questions about a project or application, please do get in touch with me via outreach@rsc.org.

For information on the scheme and to access the application form please go to the website.

We’re delighted to announce the launch of a new online introductory training course on ‘The Foundations of Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement’, developed by a team of public contributors and staff from across King’s. For those new or less experienced in involving people in their research, starting to plan public involvement can be overwhelming, with hundreds of resources and pieces of guidance out there. This training aims to distil all this information down to the essential elements you need to get started in running involvement activities. It contains 6 sections, including videos and helpful resources covering: what PPIE is, why it’s important, practical advice on how to plan and deliver this work, and what best practice looks like for ensuring that your PPIE is meaningful and inclusive. This course is designed to be flexible to complete alongside various working patterns and can provide you with a certificate of completion.

Foundations in Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement

The Centre for Translational Medicine would like to remind researchers of the Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) Pre-grant Support Fund! 🎉This scheme offers up to £350 of funding to support PPIE activities in grant application! This is internal to staff across King’s Health Partners (KCL, GSTT, KCH, SLAM). Applications are reviewed on a monthly rolling basis. 
For more information on eligibility and to apply see Patient and Public Involvement/Engagement Pre-grant Support Fund :: King’s Health Partners

We are delighted to invite you to register your interest to the next series of ‘Developing Leaders in Palliative Care’ workshops. 

This series of workshops will offer PhD students at the Cicely Saunders Institute a chance to collaborate with patients and members of the public (PPI). PPI members will have the opportunity to share their experiences and expertise with the students, to help them with their PhD studies and ensure their research will have a real-world impact. No previous research experience is necessary.  

The first workshop will be held on Wednesday 21st January 2026, 11.30-13.00. This workshop will be held online, via Zoom. Attendees of the first workshop will be invited to two subsequent workshops, dates to be confirmed. The second workshop will be held online, and the third will have the option to be held in person, in London. All attendees will be reimbursed for their time and, if attending in person, we will pay reasonable travel expenses to the final workshop.  

In this first workshop, we will hold three parallel sessions, as detailed below: 

Room 1 

• Amelia Cook: The validity and acceptability of the Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale in diverse populations with advanced illness 
• Charlotte Davies: Does a standardised comprehensive palliative care assessment (CPCA) improve person-centred assessment; how may it work and what is required to support its implementation into routine hospice care? 

Room 2 

• Natalie Ramjeeawon: Family caregiver’s hospital experiences of older adults in the last three months of life  

• Megan Bowers: Experiences of changes in physical function: analysis of interviews with people with cancer and weight loss 

Room 3 

• India Tunnard-Johnson: Geographical variation in place of death for people with dementia vs cancer 

• Ana Maksimovic: Economics and decision-making in dementia 

• Evan Brock: The use of Artificial Intelligence in Palliative Care and Dementia Care 

To ensure representativeness, we will be asking you to provide some information about yourself. All the information you provide will be kept confidential. After the events, all data will be destroyed.  

We will need to keep the meeting small to give you time to express your views and discuss fully. If we receive more applications than spaces available, we may only be able to invite some applicants to attend. However, we will be in touch to let you know of future opportunities.  

If you are interested in attending, please fill in the form using the link below to register your interest by Monday 5th January 2026. 

Developing PhD students through Patient and Public Involvement workshops – Fill out form 

A final list of attendees will be determined and notified by Friday 9th January 2026.  Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Best wishes,
India, Rachel, Megan, Natalie, Ana, and Amelia

Hello. My name is Ellie and I am a research dietitian from Imperial. I am applying for funding for a PhD research project looking at diet advice given to women with recurrent ovarian cancer.

–  What diet information is available online, and what do dietitians and clinicians advise?

–  What is the expert-consensus on best-practice for diet and ovarian cancer?

– Is proactive, earlier dietary advice beneficial? A feasibility study 

I am interested in hearing from people with lived experience of ovarian cancer (including relatives and care givers as well as women themselves) who can help with the design of this research. Involvement could be a small one-off meeting (e.g. to review a leaflet or provide insight and advice) or a larger contribution (e.g. regular meetings and involvement with analysis) depending on your interest and experience.

If you or someone close to you has or has had recurrent ovarian cancer, and you would like to know more, please send me an email at ellie.ware@nhs.net to express your interest. Please include your name, email address or phone number, and a brief summary of your experience.

Please share with anyone you might know

Thank you 

Dear all,

I wanted to share with you the blog we have written following the PPI PhD student workshop series “Developing leaders in palliative care”. The workshops were extremely well received by PPI attendees and the PhD students – who really valued the time and experiences being shared. Please read the full blog here: https://kingsengagedresearchblog.wordpress.com/2025/12/09/developing-leaders-in-palliative-care-through-intimate-honest-and-open-conversations/

We are pleased to let you all know that we were fortunate enough to be funded to run a second series of workshops and will soon be advertising the opportunities available – watch this space!

Best wishes,

India, Megan and Rachel

New King’s/MRC Public Partnership Fund: Supporting MRC applicants to involve public contributors at pre-application stage.

We are delighted to announce the upcoming launch of a new funding scheme to support early career researchers and those looking to transition to research independence to better involve public partners in the development of their MRC grant applications.

As outlined in the MRC’s Public Partnership Strategy, the MRC is placing a greater emphasis on the meaningful involvement of public partners in the shaping of the research it funds. Such partnerships with patients and/or communities during grant development has been shown to increase the relevance of research proposals and their potential for impact.

Opening in January 2026, the King’s/MRC Public Partnership programme will provide funds of up to £400 to successful applicants, along with mentorship from experts in patient and public involvement, to support early-stage public involvement.

An information session will be held on Wednesday the 14th of January at 13:30, ahead of the schemes launch on Monday 19th of January.

You can sign-up to the information session here.

For more information, please get in touch with the King’s MRC Public Partnership Team at MRC-PPF@kcl.ac.uk