Reimagining Circularity: outline stage

Opportunity status: Open Funders: Co-funders: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Funding type: Grant Total fund: £13,000,000 Maximum award: £4,320,000 Publication date: 30 October 2025 Opening date: 30 October 2025 9:00am UK time Closing date: 15 January 2026 4:00pm UK time EPSRC invite you to develop a NetworkPlus which builds new capacity, strengthens community and enhances research to innovation capabilities focused on the circular economy in built environment, textiles or data and metrics. You must imaginatively use the ‘Plus’ element to accelerate impact in your chosen area. You must be at a UK research organisation eligible for EPSRC funding. Teams must implement an inter or transdisciplinary approach, or both, including industrial partners. The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £5.41 million. EPSRC will fund 80% FEC for up to 36 months. Who can apply This opportunity is open to organisations with standard eligibility. . Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) standard eligibility rules apply. For full details, visit . Who is eligible to apply EPSRC NetworkPlus grants are open to: UK higher education institutions research council institutes UKRI-approved independent research organisations eligible public sector research establishments NHS bodies with research capacity Any individual can only appear on one application as project lead and only two projects in total. For example, one as project lead and one as co-lead or two as co-lead. Your application should demonstrate that the team combines different areas of expertise and experience as appropriate to lead a NetworkPlus and achieve the stated outcomes, including community engagement, leadership and driving impact. To foster innovative interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary research, or both, and cross-disciplinary interactions for researchers involved, we are looking for teams consisting of two or more researchers representing two or more areas of expertise to apply, and to include industrial partners. We also expect networks to champion and engage with early and mid-career individuals. What we consider as early to mid-career is broad. It can span from those recently appointed to their first permanent academic position to those who hold a modest portfolio of grants and are looking to expand their network. If early and mid-career individuals will be named in your leadership team on application, please mention this in the ‘Applicant and team capability to deliver’ section of the application form on the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service. Provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate they fall in these career stages. We will not consider years post-PhD or job title as a marker of career progression. We recognise alternative career paths and value the diversity of career experiences. We welcome the inclusion of senior professional enabling staff, such as professional research and investment strategy managers, as project co-leads. If you decide to include such roles, we would expect them to be represented as an integral part of the leadership team and so designated as project co-leads in your application. Applications must be within majority EPSRC remit and must be within the scope of this funding opportunity. We will reject applications deemed to have a majority remit within another UKRI council. We reserve the right to make such remit decisions without reference to expert review. Who is not eligible to apply Holders of postdoctoral level fellowships are not eligible to apply for an EPSRC grant. Individuals based in non-UK countries can be involved in the grant as visiting researchers, project partners, or members of advisory boards. However, they are not eligible to be project leads or co-leads, with the exception of individuals based at Norwegian institutions, who are eligible to be co-leads. Businesses are not eligible applicant organisations as part of this funding opportunity. However, they are expected to be listed as project partners. International researchers As EPSRC is a lead funder for this opportunity, international researchers can only apply as ‘project co-lead (international)’ as part of an application making use of the  or the . You should include all other international collaborators (or UK partners not based at approved organisations) as project partners. Resubmissions We will not accept uninvited resubmissions of projects that have been submitted to UKRI or any other funder.