Swedish Research Council Research Project Grants┋Humanities and Social Sciences

The purpose of the research project grant is to give researchers the freedom to formulate by themselves the research concept, method and implementation, and to solve a specific research task within a limited period of time. The Swedish Research Council rewards research of the highest scientific quality in national competition.

Eligibility criteria for applicants

The following criteria must be fulfilled in order for you to be eligible to apply for the grant. We carry out checks to ensure unqualified applications are rejected from further processing.

Applicant

The applicant for a research project grant must be an individual researcher. You will be the project leader and have scientific responsibility for the project, and your level of activity in the project must be no less than 20 per cent of a full-time equivalent. You must hold a Swedish doctoral degree or a corresponding foreign degree, awarded no later than the deadline for this call. The degree award date we use is the date you fulfilled all the criteria for a doctoral degree, such as mandatory courses, oral defence and an approved doctoral thesis. For applicants with Swedish doctoral degrees, the award date listed in Ladok applies.

Grants from the Swedish Research Council shall be administered by a Swedish university or HEI or another Swedish public organisation that fulfils our criteria for administrating organisations. To apply, your organisation must therefore be approved as an administrating organisation.

If you are awarded a grant, you must be employed by the administrating organisation at the start of and throughout the grant period, unless the Swedish Research Council approves an exception. The employment must equal at least 20 per cent of a full-time equivalent. You do not have to be employed by the administrating organisation at the time of applying.

Number of applications and previous grants

The conditions described in this section only apply to applicants and project leaders.

What grants may I apply for simultaneously from the Swedish Research Council?

You may only submit one application for this grant under this call. On the other hand, you may apply for project grants with a different focus (for 2018, Equal Conditions, 3R, Development Research or Artistic Research), but for another project idea. Other restrictions on the grants you may apply for during the same year are shown in the table below.

What eligibility criteria apply if I already have a grant from the Swedish Research Council?

There are certain restrictions if you are the project leader of a previously awarded grant that is ongoing, that is to say where the grant period (payment period from the Swedish Research Council) overlaps the grant period of the grant this application covers. Please note that the period of availability, that is to say the time during which you can draw down the grant awarded, is normally longer than the grant period. Information about the criteria for your previous grant can be found in the “Approval of Conditions” you received from the Swedish Research Council.

Note: If you have been the project leader for previous grants from the Swedish Research Council that have ended, final financial reports for all of these must have been submitted within the permitted time frame in order for you to apply for a new grant. Please contact your administrating organisation if you are unsure whether all your final reports have been submitted.

What applies for applications to or grants from other funding bodies?

If your application to the Swedish Research Council relates to the same project idea as a grant you have already been awarded by, or are applying for to another funding body, please describe this.

Participating researchers

Your application may include up to six participating researchers, that is to say researchers with a doctoral degree or corresponding competence, whose scientific competence will be crucial for the implementation of the proposed research. Participating researchers do not have to be employed by a Swedish HEI.

Participating researchers shall provide the necessary information themselves in Prisma, and upload these to the application. Any further participating partners and their roles shall be described in the research plan (please see instructions under “Research plan” below).

Costs and grant amounts

Grants may be applied for to finance all types of project-related costs, such as salaries (including your own salary, however no more than corresponding to your activity level in the project), premises, running costs (such as consumables, travel including stays at research facilities, publication costs and minor equipment), plus depreciation. Grants may not be used for scholarships. If a doctoral student participates, project funds may not be paid out as salary for the period when the doctoral student is teaching.

The minimum amount you may apply for is 400 000 SEK per year, including indirect costs. The maximum amount you may apply for is 1 500 000 SEK per year.

The average grant amount awarded for research projects within humanities and social sciences in 2017 was approximately 1 200 000 SEK per year.

Grant period

You may apply for a grant to cover a minimum of one and a maximum of four years, starting from January 2019. The first payment will be made during January 2019 at the earliest.

How do I apply?

You apply electronically in Prisma, which is the application system used by the Swedish Research Council. You create your application in Prisma by filling in the text fields, uploading information from your personal account, and attaching the appendices requested.

What happens next?

When you have registered your application and the call closes (at 14.00/2 p.m. on the deadline date of the call), the registration of your application is automatically finalised and you are given a registration number.

Your registered application is automatically forwarded to the representative of the administrating organisation for signature in Prisma. The application must be signed by the administrating organisation no later than one week (seven calendar days) after the deadline. You will receive an email when the application has been signed.

Thereafter you will find information about the status of the application, registration number and signature of the application in your account in Prisma, under the tab “Applications and grants”.

Evaluation

The scientific evaluation of the application is carried out by active researchers. These peer reviewers evaluate the application in competition with the other applications on the basis of the evaluation criteria set by the Swedish Research Council.

If an application is not completed according to the instructions, this will be weighed into the evaluation.

Decision

Shortly after the grant decision has been made, a notice of the grant awards will be published on the Swedish Research Council’s website. You will thereafter find a notice of the decision and a final statement on your application in your personal account in Prisma, under the tab “Applications and grants”. The statement consists of a grading and, in some cases, written comments.