Competitive Grants Program

The CGP is the flagship programme of RASTA under which research proposals are invited on specific themes/topics decided by the Research Advisory Committee (RAC). For this, a ‘Call for Research Proposals’ is announced bi-annually: March and October. Applications from all around Pakistan and abroad are invited through open competition on the broad research themes outlined above for the grant of awards. Anyone from across Pakistan and/or abroad, with a research focus on Pakistan’s public policy issues relevant to the stated CGP themes/topic of each round, can participate. Outreach of this programme is ensured through inviting and entertaining reasonable number of applications from outside the major cosmopolitan/metropolitan centres compete for the grants. CGP grant recipients are expected to produce research articles or monograph of international peer-reviewed publication quality. Interim and final reports submitted to the review panel are expected to be intermediate products leading to final published output as RASTA Working Papers, Research Reports and/or Book (Chapters). The RAC may also ask grant recipients to produce RASTA Policy Briefs for wider research dissemination. Completed research will be presented in the RASTA Conference. The finding of the research studies will be shared with the relevant stakeholders to inform public policy making at national and sub-national levels.