I’m still gobsmacked at the funding. A million quid. A MILLION quid.
I’m not saying that humanities doesn’t deserve funding by way. I’m asking what on earth could justify a grant of that size. For context, the lab I used to work in had huge running costs - housing and caring for our lab mice and flies cost about 30k a month. A millilitre of some specific reagents cost a thousand pounds. We had machinery that cost tens of thousands each to sequence DNA, amplify it, paint chromosomes. Laser microscopes. Expensive stuff - because running a lab is expensive.
Can someone with experience of the field tell me if million pound grants are normal here? How big is the team? What is that being spent on? Over how many years?
Having actually juggled finances for labs and projects - both academic and clinical, I’m staggered that a million quid for that kind of research.