A joint fund of the Linnean Society of London and the Systematics Association, the LinnéSys: Systematics Research Fund provides grants annually for small-scale research and education projects in the field of taxonomy and systematics. Applications to study any group of organisms, living or fossil, are welcome.

ELIGIBILITY

In order to be eligible, the applicant must be a CURRENT MEMBER of the Linnean Society of London or the Systematics Association at the time of application. To register as a member please see Linnean membership and Systematics Association membership.

Applicants may be at any stage of their research from undergraduate student onwards.

Researchers who were awarded a LinnéSys award in 2024 or 2025 are not eligible for funding in the current round.

Please note that, due to UK banking regulations, we cannot send money to countries, administrations or persons subject to financial sanctions or ‘regimes’. We may thus have to reject certain applications for this reason, regardless of the scientific quality of the proposal. Gov.uk provides information on financial sanctions imposed by the UK government. Please note our bankers may impose additional restrictions in addition to the countries on this list.

STUDENTS

Students are welcome to apply for a LinnéSys grant. However, if their proposal is part of their main study project, they should explain why this activity was not budgeted for in the original funding proposal covering their studies. Alternatively, they should outline how the LinnéSys funds would allow them to pursue an additional research question that was not part of their original project.

EDUCATION ACTIVITIES AND CITIZEN SCIENCE

Applications involving education or citizen science activities are eligible if they focus on taxonomy and systematics. Applications for education activities must include the target audience/s, approximate number of participants, and anticipated learning outputs. Citizen science applications must describe how the project team will work together and/or co-design with the public, as well as list the desired outcomes.

FUNDING AVAILABLE

A budget needs to be provided with the application. We accept applications in the range of £500-£1,500. We nonetheless aim to maximise the number of projects funded, and therefore applications requesting more than £1,000 will need to provide strong justification of why the maximum amount is requested in order to be considered.

ELIGIBLE COSTS

Fieldwork expenses; laboratory consumables; purchase of scientific equipment; time on analytical equipment; services for specimen preparation; sequencing costs; publication of books, monographs, field guides, etc.

We will not provide funds for attendance at scientific meetings, publication of articles in scientific journals or payment of open-access costs. Student allowances, tuition fees, staff hiring, and bench fees are also not considered eligible.

CONTACT DETAILS

Please make sure the e-mail address in the application form is correct. All communications will be directed to this e-mail account. Please check your spam folder in case our e-mails have been caught by your spam filters.

FORMAT AND CONTENT OF THE PROPOSAL

Applicants must submit a single PDF document (max 2Mb) containing their scientific proposal and budget. The document must not exceed one side of A4 including both sections, minimum font size 10pt.

NOTE: Submit your PDF document with the naming format familyname_firstname.pdf (e.g. Smith_John.pdf).

The proposal needs to cover background information and rationale for the project, a research question, objectives, methodologies, broader impact and, if anticipated, expected research outputs (i.e., targeted journals, publishers, type of education materials, websites, interactive identification keys, etc.). Figures, tables and references can be included.

QUESTIONS AND HELP

A webinar presenting the LinnéSys scheme and answers to various questions is available on our Youtube channel.

If you still have any questions or need help with the form, please contact us at linnesys@systass.org.