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FWF | #ConnectingMinds

Deadline
Academy

With the support of the Nationalstiftung the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) is issuing for the first time a call for #ConnectingMinds in 2020. This new programme is designed to encourage researchers to include non-academic stakeholders in their research processes.

Funding is offered to teams that combine scientific and societal knowledge and thereby attempt to meet social, technological, ecological, and economic challenges.

The #ConnectingMinds programme pursues the following objectives:

  • Initiate cooperative research projects that combine scientific knowledge and practical know-how (transdisciplinary research)
  • Support research projects on topics of high current and future social relevance in which possible solutions are sought to complex challenges
  • Strengthen the dialogue between science and society as well as increase the transfer of research results into practice (support the “third mission” concept)
  • Improve the capacity building of researchers in terms of transdisciplinary research

In the first call for proposals of #ConnectingMinds — which is open to all topics ranging from digitalisation to nursing care to climate protection to democracy — €4 million is available to researchers at universities and research institutions for projects in which researchers initiate and implement a research process together with people from other different societal organisations.

The programme is divided into two stages. In spring 2020, two to five researchers can submit an application for the implementation of a project-specific workshop (#ConnectingMinds workshop). This workshop is intended to support the researchers together with the other project participants (including practical actors) in further developing and elaborating their project idea and their planned research process for a #ConnectingMinds project.

In a second step, the full application for funding for a #ConnectingMinds project can be submitted at the beginning of 2021. A #ConnectingMinds project has a maximum project duration of 5 years with a maximum funding amount of € 200,000 per year. The target group and the requirements are the same for a #ConnectingMinds workshop and for the further #ConnectingMinds project. Only those applicants who have successfully carried out a workshop are eligible for the following full application.

Further information: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/fwf-programmes/connectingminds/