The Consumer Data Research Centre has been successful in applying to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to continue their data services from April 2022 to September 2024.
This officially marks the next phase for the CDRC, during which the Centre intends to build upon its proven vision and strategy, combining a unique, cloud-based data infrastructure with an established framework for supporting innovative research and capacity building.
The award will allow the CDRC to continue to increase the access, creation, use and awareness of DigitalFootprint Data (DFD) such as geo-spatial, commercial, transactional and sensor data, and advance the quality, quantity and impact of social science research.
This latest endorsement by the ESRC marks the most recent milestone in the continuing evolution of the CDRC since 2014. The award will allow the CDRC to build on our successes, supporting thriving interdisciplinary DFD communities to address the most urgent research and policy questions, which have been raised by both the challenges and opportunities of a post-COVID society.
We were thrilled that our bid was given particularly positive feedback for clearly providing “a strong asset and a foundational infrastructure” and “growing number of research outputs”, as well as “sustaining the foundations of innovative, creative and widely-used data infrastructure across the social sciences”.
The positive funding outcome means that, from April 2022, the Centre will be able to not only maintain its existing infrastructure, but also to foster innovation through partnerships that promote further collaboration across multiple disciplines, both within our local institutions and across a wider network of academic and external stakeholders.
This funding was provided via UKRI ESRC’s World Class Labs budget to support expansions and upgrades to existing social science data infrastructure.