ADR UK Research Fellowships 2025 (RF2025): Closed Historical Reference

ADR UK Research Fellowships 2025 (RF2025): Closed Historical Reference

The ADR UK Research Fellowships 2025 (RF2025) call is closed. The official UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) opportunity page records the closing deadline as 26 February 2026 at 4:00pm UK time and states that applications could not be made after that point. No replacement ADR UK Research Fellowships round is announced on the official opportunity and funding pages checked for this update, so this page is retained as a historical reference rather than presented as an open opportunity.

The call was for researchers proposing an 18-month project that would demonstrate the policy-impact potential of one or more ADR England flagship datasets. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), with Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK) setting the research focus and UKRI administering the opportunity. The official page lists a total fund of £1,800,000 and a maximum award of £200,000.

At a glance

What the fellowship was designed to support

RF2025 was aimed at research and analysis that could show how ADR England flagship datasets might contribute to public policy impact. The dataset requirement was central. A proposal could not treat an ADR England dataset as a token addition to a project built around unrelated material: the official guidance says that all proposed projects must use ADR England flagship dataset(s), and it excludes work that is not feasible with a specific flagship dataset.

The call described four objectives for a strong fellowship:

1. Useful Research: demonstrate the potential of administrative-data research to inform public policy within the fellowship timeframe.
2. Useful Data: improve the value of flagship datasets as research resources for future users.
3. Useful Engagement: create meaningful opportunities to engage government and the public in shaping the project, delivering impact, and maintaining public acceptance for research use of data.
4. Community Building: contribute to communities of practice while developing as a research leader using administrative data.

These objectives made the scheme more specific than a general social-science fellowship. A good proposal needed a research question that was answerable with an identified dataset, a credible route to public benefit, a plan for engagement with relevant users, and a contribution that would make the data or research community more useful after the award. The call welcomed collaboration with government data owners, voluntary and community organisations, and other bodies that could use the evidence, but collaboration was not a substitute for showing dataset feasibility.

Funding, duration, and work pattern

The maximum project cost was £200,000 on a full economic cost basis. ESRC would fund up to 80% of the FEC, with the remainder expected from the research organisation. Applicants therefore needed to involve their research office early enough to confirm that the host could support the unfunded share and that the proposed staffing pattern was affordable within the cap.

The award duration was 18 months, with projects required to start in September 2026. The funding guidance recommended a maximum of 0.4 full-time equivalent during the initial three-month stage and a minimum of 0.6 full-time equivalent during the core research phase covering the remaining 15 months. Those commitments were expected to appear in the grant costings. They were not simply suggestions about personal availability: they were part of the financial and delivery assumptions for the fellowship.

The call also allowed relevant supplementary datasets where they were already available through the Trusted Research Environment used for the flagship data, or where a pre-existing dataset could feasibly be brought into that environment. Supplementary data had to add value without displacing the required ADR England dataset. Applicants were responsible for checking feasibility with the relevant data owners before submission.

Eligibility

The opportunity was open to organisations with standard eligibility for ESRC funding, so the lead organisation needed to be a UK research organisation eligible for ESRC funding. Researchers at all career stages were encouraged to apply. The call specifically recognised that some applicants would be new to administrative data, but those applicants were expected to include strong mentoring and capacity-building plans rather than assume that subject expertise alone would cover the data and governance requirements.

The international restrictions were explicit. International project leads, international project co-leads, and international fellows were not eligible. ADR England flagship data could only be accessed from within the UK, and applicants had to remain based in the UK for the full duration of the fellowship. A wider team could involve partners where appropriate, but the applicant and fellowship leadership had to meet the UK-based requirements.

Eligibility also depended on the project itself. The research needed to use a named ADR England flagship dataset, be deliverable within 18 months, benefit the public, and be capable of accreditation by the relevant ADR UK Trusted Research Environment (TRE). Projects that did not align with the advertised research priorities, that relied too heavily on supplementary data, or that could not pass the relevant public-benefit and governance checks were outside the fund’s scope.

Unsuccessful applications previously submitted to ADR UK or UKRI opportunities could be resubmitted if they had been sufficiently revised in line with the UKRI Resubmission policy. That provision did not reopen the closed RF2025 call; it described how an eligible revised application could be treated within the programme’s resubmission rules.

Secure data access and feasibility

Administrative-data access was a core part of the application, not an administrative detail to solve after an award. The official guidance placed the work under the Five Safes framework and required applicants to develop projects that could be accredited under the rules of the relevant ADR UK TRE. Applicants were expected to work with data owners before submitting so that the proposed questions, variables, linkage, and delivery plan were realistic.

For work using the ONS Secure Research Service, successful researchers would need accredited-researcher status, and the project would need approval through the data owners’ information-governance review. The guidance directed applicants to the ONS People and Project Service and noted that free ONS training supported the accreditation process. After a successful award, the project would also need project accreditation to confirm that it was feasible, legal, ethical, and in the public interest. Data owners could also require a data access or data-sharing agreement.

The secure setting had to be planned as part of the proposal. The official page listed options including ONS Safe Rooms, SafePods, SafePoints, and ONS Assured Organisational Connectivity. If a SafePoint was needed, applicants had to apply separately before submitting the fellowship application, state that the application had been made, and include eligible costs where appropriate. These requirements mean that a proposal should identify its intended TRE, data owner, access route, accreditation steps, and likely lead times before the narrative is finalised.

The funding decision was provisional until formal project review accreditation by the relevant ADR UK TRE and data owners. A persuasive methods section therefore needed to explain not only the analysis, but also why the data could be accessed and used for that analysis under the applicable safeguards. It should identify the main risks, such as unavailable variables, linkage limitations, disclosure controls, or delays in approvals, and give a workable response to each.

Application route used for RF2025

Applications were submitted through the UKRI Funding Service. Je-S was not the route for this call. The fellow was responsible for completing the application, while the lead research organisation was the only party able to submit it to UKRI.

The official application sequence was:

1. Select Start application on the UKRI funding-finder page and confirm that you are the fellow.
2. Sign in to, or create, a UKRI Funding Service account. The account required selecting the organisation, verifying an email address, and setting a password. If the organisation was not listed, the applicant needed to contact the Funding Service support address and allow time for it to be added.
3. Answer the application questions in the Funding Service text boxes. Applicants could save their answers and return to them, or work offline and paste the final text into the service. Any required upload had to follow the service’s file instructions.
4. Check the application in read-only view before sending it to the research office.
5. Send the completed draft to the research office for institutional checking. The office could return it for edits.
6. The research office submitted the checked application to UKRI.

The deadline was a hard stop: ESRC had to receive the application by 4:00pm UK time on 26 February 2026, and applications could not be made after that time. The official guidance also warned that an application could not be changed after submission and would not be returned for amendment. Institutional review therefore needed to happen before the public deadline, not on the assumption that corrections could be made later.

Applicants using images had to provide a descriptive caption or legend immediately underneath each image, insert each new image on a new line, and keep each file below 5MB in an accepted format. Images were intended only for important visual information that could not easily be expressed in words; paragraphs of text and tables embedded as images were not permitted. Applications were expected to be self-contained, with hyperlinks used only for direct reference information rather than to extend the case being assessed.

What the application needed to establish

The main research narrative needed to connect a specific policy or public-service problem to a specific ADR England flagship dataset. It should set out the research questions and hypotheses, the relevant variables and geographic level, the analysis plan, and the reason the methods were suitable. A timeline needed to show how the work could be delivered in 18 months, including data access, approvals, analysis, engagement, outputs, and contingencies.

The proposal also needed a practical impact plan. That meant naming the public groups, government users, data owners, intermediaries, or community organisations relevant to the research, and explaining when and how they would shape the work or use its findings. General claims that the research would be useful were weaker than a defined route from engagement to an evidence product, decision, service improvement, or future research resource.

Reviewers also assessed applicant capability, career development, host-organisation support, resources and cost justification, ethics and responsible research and innovation, feasibility and data requirements, data management and sharing where applicable, and facilities. The host-support section was especially important for a data-access fellowship: it needed to demonstrate that the organisation could provide governance, infrastructure, secure access, mentoring, and the remaining share of FEC.

Historical timeline

The RF2025 dates recorded by the official UKRI page were:

• 13 November 2025 at 9:00am: opportunity opened.
• 13 November 2025 at 12:00pm: community catalyst research agendas briefing webinar.
• 18 November 2025 at 12:30pm: RAPID population interactions with employment, benefits and pensions flagship-dataset briefing webinar.
• 26 February 2026 at 4:00pm: application deadline and closing of the call.
• September 2026: required project start for awards from this round.

Those dates belong to the closed RF2025 cycle. They are retained here so that a reader reviewing a past proposal, resubmission, award record, or institutional decision can understand the timetable that applied. They should not be read as an open application window.

How to use this page now

There is no current deadline to apply through this page. Readers looking for a live opportunity should check the official UKRI Funding Finder and ADR UK funding-opportunities pages for a newly announced call rather than reuse the RF2025 date. A future round could change the datasets, award ceiling, eligibility rules, secure-access requirements, application questions, or start date.

For work inspired by RF2025, the most useful preparation remains concrete: identify the ADR England flagship dataset that can answer the question, speak with the relevant data owner or TRE, ask the host organisation to confirm ESRC eligibility and FEC support, and define the public users who could act on the findings. Prepare a feasibility and governance plan before polishing the narrative. That preparation is valuable, but it does not constitute an application to the closed RF2025 call.

Official source and support

• ADR UK Research Fellowships 2025 (RF2025) on UKRI
• ADR UK funding opportunities
• UKRI Funding Service support: [email protected]
• ONS SRS accreditation and approval support: [email protected]
• Dataset-specific queries: [email protected]

The UKRI opportunity page is the controlling source for the RF2025 deadline, award terms, eligibility, secure-access requirements, and application route. This entry is deliberately marked as a historical reference because that official page records the opportunity as closed and no replacement ADR UK Research Fellowships cycle has been announced in the checked official listings.