We offer up to £5,500 each year for a UK philosophy department or other appropriate applicant to organise a conference, either on a single day or across multiple days, on a philosophical subject. The primary criterion for the award of a grant will be the philosophical
merit of the proposal. However, in the event of a number of proposals of equal philosophical merit being submitted, preference may be given to proposals
which demonstrate a capacity to engage the interest not only of professional philosophers but of members of the general public.
This initiative replaces the recent Public Philosophy Event scheme, and revives an earlier Royal Institute conference scheme.
Applications for the academic year 2026/2027 are now open.
Applications should be submitted to the Royal Institute of Philosophy (TRIP) up to and including the deadline date of 9:00am on Tuesday, 26th May 2026. Submissions after this date will not be accepted.
For the purposes of this scheme, 2026/27 events run from 1 Aug 2026 – 31 May 2027.
Applications should be made using the required application form. We will consider outline applications if full plans are not yet available.
Applicants should explain the theme, philosophical significance, timeliness, structure and location of the proposed conference.
Applicants should consider these questions in their proposals:
- What philosophical question does the conference
address? Why is it important, and how does the conference add to what has been said before? - Will you fully programme the event, issue a call for papers, or a mixture of the two?
- Will there be a separate category of papers for graduate students and/or early career researchers?
- Who has agreed in principle to take part? Applications which already have a strong list of agreed participants may be at an advantage.
- Where will the conference be held? Bear in mind that if it is part of your ambition to attract members of the general public, holding the conference off campus e.g. in an arts space, public library, theatre or museum is likely to be an advantage.
- How many people are you hoping to attract?
- Will you charge a registration fee? Ideally the Royal Institute would like the event to be completely free to all attending, with ambitions (e.g. number of speakers from overseas) tailored to meet that constraint. However in the event that a registration fee is charged we would expect various categories attending (minimally, students and the unwaged) to be exempt from the fee.
There is a requirement to produce a volume from the conference, to be published as a Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplementary Volume by Cambridge University Press. £500 of the grant is for the editor of this volume. If the proposed editor is distinct from the conference organiser, the identity of the editor as well as the conference organiser should be made clear in the application. Speakers should be informed in advance that delivering a thematically suitable paper for publication in the volume is a condition of acceptance of their contribution to the conference, whether or not their paper at the conference is a draft of their written submission. Broadly in line with the
editorial policy of Philosophy, the papers submitted for the volume should be academically rigorous though free of unnecessary technicality. The papers submitted should be around 12 – 15 contributions and the total extent 70,000 – 100,000 words. Deadlines for submission and further details of the publishing process will be communicated to the successful applicant(s).
Applicants must take note of our conditions of sponsorship.