NDRP 2025 FUNDING ROUNDS

NDRP 2025 Research Funding: safety of people with disability

The National Disability Research Partnership funds research by and with people with disability. We aim to build a connected community of disability researchers who work in partnership with people with disability.

In 2025, the NDRP will fund research on the safety of people with disability. There will be two grant rounds. We will support the teams we fund to connect and learn together as they work.

What you need to know:

Round One will fund small projects to co-design research and/or bring together what is known about a topic.

Round Two will fund fund longer-term research that creates new knowledge.

Round One

Round One funding applications will open in February 2025 and close at the end of March 2025.

These projects should take less than six months. Two types of projects will be eligible for Round One funding:

Projects to co-design research. We will fund groups to build partnerships to co-design research projects.
Projects that bring together what is already known about a topic. We will fund projects that use rapid review or evidence synthesis methods.

More information about the types of projects we will fund in Round One is below.

Round Two will open in late 2025 to fund longer term projects that generate new knowledge. We expect groups that are funded in Round One will want to apply for this round, but it is open to any group, even if they were not funded in Round One.

Round Two

What's next

The Research Committee was appointed in November 2024. We will release grant guidelines and more information in February 2025.

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Research area: Safety of people with disability

Find out more about the research area, safety of people with disability, in the NDRP’s Research Agenda.

Safety is a wide-ranging topic, which can apply to many research themes across different settings and areas of life.

This research area also relates to Outcome Area 3 of Australia's Disability Strategy: Safety, rights, and justice.

Why are we focusing on safety?

Our funding decisions are led by the NDRP Research Agenda. The Research Agenda was developed after long consultation with the disability community. It covers many topics that are organised into 12 major areas of research.

The NDRP Board chose research area 2, safety of people with disability, as the topic for 2025 funding.

They made this decision using five criteria:

Evidence gaps: is more evidence needed on this topic?
Policy imperative: will research into this topic have an impact on urgent or long-term policy or practice?
Does this topic impact a broad range of people with disability OR does it severely compromise the human rights of a particular group of people with disability?
Are there synergies and alignment with other areas of the Research Agenda?
No duplication of other large-scale funded research initiatives.

The topic of safety also builds on recommendations from the Disability Royal Commission.

Activities that we will fund in Round One, February 2025

To be eligible, the project should have a timeline of six months or less. In line with NDRP Principles, all projects must be inclusive and use co-design approaches. There are two types of projects we will fund in Round One.

1. Projects to co-design research

These seed funding grants will fund partnerships to co-design larger projects. For example, a partnership could be between a university and a Disability Representative Organisation or Disabled People's Organisation. These project teams should show a genuine commitment to inclusive and co-designed research. For more detail, see the Frequently Asked Questions below.

Teams will receive funding to work together to:

understand a problem or opportunity better, from different points of view
build relationships and test good ways of working together
decide on research questions to answer
design a research project together to answer the research questions
write a funding application for this project, ready to submit to the NDRP in Round Two, or other funding body

2. Projects that bring together what is already known about a topic.

These grants will fund partnerships to identify and synthesise existing evidence, knowledge and/or identify data available about an issue. These projects can use different methods, for example systematic reviews, rapid reviews or scoping reviews. These projects might summarise what is known about a topic, look at what can be done to improve outcomes, find any knowledge gaps, or find data sources and methods that can help to better understand a topic. Teams should include people who understand the topic and people who understand different viewpoints about policy or practice.

Support from the NDRP

We will support people and groups who want to work together and apply for funding. Early in 2025 we will have more details of the support available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who can apply for funding?

Research funded by the NDRP must be done in research partnerships. Each application will need to appoint a lead organisation that will receive the grant money. Any organisation with an ABN is eligible to apply.

Q: What’s inclusive, collaborative disability research?

Inclusive research is based on making sure people with disability have genuine decision-making power in the research process. They may be more or less involved at different stages, depending on the methods and goals of the research.

There is no single model for inclusive research, but there are some key characteristics and principles that underpin inclusive research. They are:

People with disability have genuine decision-making power
Traditional power relations between researchers and participants are challenged
The knowledge of people with disability is recognised, valued and centred
The research addresses the priorities of people with disability and leads to real life benefits to the disability community.

The UNSW Disability Innovation Institute have developed Doing Research Inclusively: Co-Production in Action. This is one framework that may be a useful starting point.

Q: How much funding will be available?

In the coming months, the Research Committee and Board of Directors will decide how much funding is available for each grant round and for each project.

Q: When will the funding rounds open?

We expect that round one will open in February and applications will be open for 6 weeks.

We will make sure that anyone who wants to apply for a grant has plenty of time before applications open to get ready. Applications for Round One will be straightforward. We will publish key dates and instructions about how to apply in early 2025.

Round two is likely to open in October 2025.

Q: Can I apply for Round Two even if I didn’t get funding in Round One?

Yes, anyone can apply for funding in Round Two.

The seed funding grants are designed to help new partnerships form, provide time and money for co-design and to refine research questions.

We know there are existing research partnerships who do not need seed funding and can apply directly for Round Two.

Q: When will more information be available?

We aim to release grant guidelines and more information about Round One in early February.