Funding Requirements

Funding of up to 140 GBP will only be offered to UACES Members whose paper proposal was accepted following the Call for Papers. Funding is available for up to 30 participants at the conference. If there are more than 30 delegates wishing to avail of the funding, it will be offered to those who registered for the conference sooner.

Funding is only awarded to delegates who are UACES Members and currently studying for their PhD or who have submitted their PhD within the last three years (at the time of the conference). There are also up to 5 funded places available for masters-level students.

Funding will be allocated following paper-selection.

General

1. Delegates must register and accept their funded place by Sunday 24 May 2026.
2. Funding is conditional upon attendance. Delegates must attend both days of the conference (4 and 5 June 2026)
3. Funding is conditional upon providing a research paper (6000-8000 words) to the participants in the delegate's research panel (e.g. fellow papergivers, chair and discussant) by Sunday 24 May 2026.
4. Funding is also conditional upon submitting to UACES one of the following items for publication on our website: your full paper, a blog post based on your paper, a podcast, a video OR a policy brief (further details here). The deadline to submit this is Sunday 5 July 2026 (unless you have explicit written agreement from UACES to submit at a later date);
5. By sending us a paper, blog post, podcast or policy brief, delegates give us permission to display the submission on our website, before, during and after the conference until at least 31 December 2026.
6. Funding is conditional on receiving a completed expenses form which you must complete after the conference has finished, including all relevant receipts.

Eligible Expenses

UACES is offering up 140 GBP per eligible delegate towards the expenses of attending the conference. The funding can only be used to cover the following items:

1.  Up to 2 nights' accommodation in Cluj-Napoca. The accommodation must be booked for the dates surrounding the conference. We can cover the costs of staying in a hotel, bed and breakfast, hostel or AirBnB (or equivalent). We cannot provide funding to cover the costs of staying with friends or family. We cannot reimburse accommodation costs for people who work or study in Cluj-Napoca or surrounding areas (within one hour of travel). If attending with a friend or colleague, you may split the accommodation costs and you can both upload the same receipt in your expenses form outlining this.
2. Return travel to and from Cluj-Napoca. This must be economy class.

Payment of Funding

1. Reimbursements will only be made to those who attend both days of the full event.
2. Delegates may only submit ONE claim for up to 140 GBP of expenses.
3. Claims can be made by completing the expenses form including copies of original receipts/tickets. Receipts/tickets should clearly show the date of purchase and (if applicable) the date of travel.
4. Expenses will be reimbursed by bank transfer for UK-based and Eurozone-based delegates and by PayPal for all other delegates. Please set up a PayPal account in advance of the conference if you do not already have one.
5. Claims must be submitted between 5 June and 5 August 2026.

Those who have been offered the funding of up to £140 to attend the Graduate Forum Research Conference are required to submit an output and to complete an expenses claim form. Outputs must be received prior to the funding being paid out, and by 5 June 2026. The expenses claim form must be received by 5 August. Funding recipients can chose from the below options to submit as their output:

Papers

You may submit the full paper you presented at the conference as your output for receiving the funding (Not any powerpoint presentations). Papers should be 6,000-8,000 words long, word-processed, 1.5 spaced and sized to A4. If the paper you submitted prior to the conference was a working draft, then please let us know if you wish to make some edits prior to submitting to us to share on our website. If you are hoping to publish your paper anywhere then it is advisable not to chose this output option.

Blog Posts

Blog posts should be on the topic of the research you are presenting and will be edited and published for Crossroads Europe (the UACES Graduate Forum and JCER blog).

Please read examples of blog posts here and follow the style guide here.

We also have a collection of top tips on writing academic blogs, based on a recent UACES GF workshop, at these links:

• Twitter Q&A on writing blogs
• Blogging toolkit by Albrecht Sonntag
• "How to write for an academic blog" by former UACES GF Committee member, Anthony Salamone

Videos and Podcasts

Your video or podcast should summarise or explore your research in an engaging way; they could be animations, interviews or simply a short talk. Please see examples of past videos and podcasts on our Multimedia Pages. If you are interested in creating a video or podcast, please email Daniel at UACES ([email protected]) before you start recording, to discuss the suitability of your idea and for any assistance. UACES can assist with a limited number of videos and podcast recordings during the conference.