2025 Early Career Grants Programme - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

You are eligible to apply for a Grant if you are a researcher or global health professional who has not received over £5,000 of research funding in your own name before, and working in, or interested in, tropical medicine or global health. Applicants can be of any nationality and based anywhere in the world. The programme’s aim is to encourage the next generation of global health leaders, innovators, and professionals to carry out projects that could make an impact on global health. 

Applicants must meet the following criteria:  

• Not received any research funding of £5,000 or more in their own name before.  
• Have a clear research plan for which they are seeking support.  
• If applicants apply whilst affiliated with, or employed by, a particular organisation, and then they seek to transfer to another organisation during an award, written permission to move the grant activity is required from RSTMH and will be granted only in exceptional circumstances. 
• Have access to adequate supervision from the same supervisor for the duration of the project. 
• Have the appropriate insurance to carry out the research. 
• Be able to submit all Programme-related documents and forms to RSTMH in English.
• The project must comply with ethical standards relevant to the field of study (e.g. human subjects, animal welfare, environmental impact), and the applicant must have the necessary ethics approval to conduct research in the study area.  
• Hold a registered bank account which accepts GBP. Please note that a condition of an award is that grant funds are paid into the awardee’s personal bank account and not an institutional account. If this presents an issue, please let us know. 
• Have not received an RSTMH Early Career Grant before. 
• Have submitted only one application for an RSTMH grant in any one year. 
• Not be an RSTMH Global Assessor in the same year. 
• Not be seeking funds for a project already started or completed. 
• Not be a named referee on an RSTMH grant application in the same year. 

Yes, you can apply.  

Although RSTMH anticipates that most applicants will be at the start of their careers, we recognise that some more experienced professionals may be new to research and may be eligible to apply for an Early Career Grant. There is a section on the application form where you can describe your relevant experience – please make it clear hear how you consider yourself to be an early career researcher.  

Applications to the 2025 Grants Programme must be entered on RSTMH’s grants platform Benefactor. Applications submitted outside of this platform will not be considered. Register here to begin your application.  

Applications can be started and then saved, so that you can complete it over a period of time. Once an application is submitted on Benefactor, it cannot be amended. 

If you need to amend something on your application after submission, you will need to withdraw your application and submit a new one before the deadline.  

Applications must be submitted in English, and must be complete, with all mandatory questions answered, in order to be considered. 

Please review the Benefactor Guidance page for advice on how to submit your application.  

The maximum amount you can request from RSTMH for an Early Career Grant is GBP £5,000 (including any relevant tax you pay for purchases). Your costs should be justified and appropriate for your proposed activities, and you need to provide a full breakdown of the items in your budget with a clear explanation for their cost. 

Please review the Budget Guidance page for advice on how to construct your budget. 

All applications must be in English. We regret that applications in other languages cannot be accepted at this time. 

Yes, you can apply for an RSTMH Early Career Grant, even if previous applications have been declined. 

Yes, you can.  

However, you must state this on the application form (there is a question that asks you about this) and you must let RSTMH know the outcome of the other applications as soon as you find out.  

You cannot be funded by two different donors for the same work. If you are awarded both an RSTMH Grant and an external Grant and wish to accept RSTMH, you would have to withdraw or decline your other grant application. 

Budgets submitted as part of an application to the programme must include costs that are strictly relevant to the associated project.  

In addition to irrelevant costs, the following items are also not eligible to be covered by the grant funds: 

• Alcohol. 
• Salary or stipend for awardee. 
• Registration fees, travel and accommodation for conference or event attendance.  
• Publishing costs/fees for academic journals*. Awardees may be eligible for an automatic publication fee waiver or discount for the RSTMH journals. Some awardees may be eligible to apply for publishing costs. 
• Miscellaneous costs.  
• Business class travel or alcohol consumption.  
• Tuition fees for PhD or MSc. 
• Bank charges. 

*   RSTMH journals, like many others, offer waivers or discounted rates for publication costs. RSTMH also offers highly discounted rates to developing countries, based on OUP (its publisher) policy (N.B. Does not include India). 

If successful, each awardee will be gifted RSTMH membership as part of the award. This will be paid for independently of the award by the funder and should not be included as a budget item. 

If any of the above ineligible costs are included in the budget of an applicant, then the ineligible costs will be taken off the budget or the application may be declined. Alternative items cannot be added to replace the cost of the removed items. 

Please review the Budget Guidance page for advice on how to construct your budget. 

In your application form, you will be asked to submit two attachments, each containing one of your references. These will need to be your complete references. You will not be able to submit your application without these file attachments uploaded. 

Please note, you need your application and your two references to be submitted before the deadline. 

Please see the Reference Guidance page for more information on this.  

All work submitted as part of the application for the grant must be your own original work, written in your own words. The concept, proposal, and submitted reporting must incorporate your own ideas and judgements. Plagiarism – which here refers to the presentation of another person's thoughts, words or work as though they were the applicant’s own – is not permitted and all work must be referenced using the referencing system detailed in the application form.  

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, the following: 

• Word for word (verbatim) copying or paraphrasing of another’s work without appropriate referencing.  
• Self-plagiarism – unacknowledged re-use of the applicant’s own published or submitted work. 
• Unacknowledged quotations.  
• Collusion – when two or more applicants collaborate in the preparation and the production of work, which is submitted by one or more of the applicants as their own work.  
• Outsourcing – when the applicant uses a proposal writing business or outsources all or part of their project to a third party. This includes outsourcing all or part of the application to the project supervisor.  
• AI – used strategically, AI can support applicants’ learning and proposal writing. However, the copying directly of written or budget materials directly from AI is not permitted.  

The use of templates or examples (including those available on the RSTMH website) to advise and structure the proposal or budget is allowed, but the work must be rigorously adjusted to the specific project. 

If RSTMH has any concern regarding potential plagiarism in your application, they will ask you to demonstrate and evidence how you have produced your work and estimated costings.  

Applications found to be non-compliant with the above stipulations will be declined. 

If you have any questions about a potential plagiarism issue, please contact greta [dot] holmes [at] rstmh [dot] org for clarification.