Claiming your expenses
Each JRA has an expenses allowance of £200, which can be claimed for any costs that directly support your research. This page contains all the information you need to know about what you can claim for, and the process of submitting an expense claim.
To try to ensure that no JRA is adversely affected by costs resulting from their research (which will often be unforeseen), we have also allocated each JRA a £200 expenses allowance. This allowance can only be claimed for costs that directly support your research, and you will be expected to explain/prove that any claim made is necessary to the satisfactory progression of your research project.
Here are some examples of things that JRAs commonly claim for:
- travel whilst undertaking fieldwork (i.e. visiting archives or external academics)
- ordering books not available from the library
- subscriptions to access online articles
- buying specific software required for research (i.e. data analysis software)
- money used to pay participants to engage in research.
Please note that, unfortunately, we are unable to refund any travel to and from the university.
Claims can only be made in arrears (i.e. after you have purchased the goods you are claiming for). To make a claim, you must complete a Student Expense Form [PDF, 165KB] and return this, along with original receipts or invoices for all items claimed, to undergraduate-research@sussex.ac.uk. As we need to see receipts for all items claimed, we can only reimburse you once the purchase has been made.
For JRAs within the sciences, we can transfer the whole £200 to the supervisor at the beginning of the scheme, in order to cover the costs of lab materials. If your supervisor would like us to do this for your JRA project, then they should email undergraduate-research@sussex.ac.uk and copy you in to show your agreement.
If you are unsure of whether a claim you intend to make is valid, then please feel free to email us at undergraduate-research@sussex.ac.uk, as it’s always best to check first.