Externally financed research comprises a significant proportion of the research carried out at the University. Researchers regularly devote substantial amounts of energy and effort to writing applications to research committees and foundations, sometimes with great success, sometimes, sadly, with poor results. Nevertheless, many of our researchers are successful, with a number of them receiving recurring grants, both small and large.
We the Deputy Vice Presidents take the view that the work we put in internally to prepare, review and propose improvements at the departmental, faculty and subject levels yields healthy dividends in the form of greater numbers of successful applications. For this reason, we wish to increase the support to our researchers. During the autumn a number of seminars will be held related to the Human Science Academic Area, and some of our staff, who have an insight into both preparation teams and large-scale research applications, will share their knowledge in a somewhat practical manner: areas covered will include the Riksbanken programme support, the Swedish Research Council assessment criteria and ERC applications by researchers with personal experience of such work and such funding. The seminars will be aimed primarily at those who so far do not have extensive direct experience of applying for external funding and who will gain an insight into how to work with applications strategically.
The majority of us researchers only find success through practice and numerous attempts. It is important, therefore, to be able to get to know about the expertise of others and to float our ideas. We want these seminars to provide an open forum for a wide variety of issues. A forum where colleagues meet each other to share their experiences.
This article is written by Yvonne Svanström and Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre, Deputy Vice Presidents of Stockholm University. It appears in the section ”Words from the University’s senior management team”, where different members of the management team take turns to write about topical issues. Words from the University’s senior management team appears in every edition of News for staff which is distributed to the entirety of the University staff.