New funding instrument: NWO Open Competition – SSH for free, curiosity-driven research

At the beginning of June the NWO Domain Social Sciences and Humanities will launch a new funding instrument: the NWO Open Competition – SSH for free, curiosity-driven research. Deadline for submitting pre-proposals is September 25, 2018. The budget available is € 16.55 million. Researchers will be able to submit proposals without any thematic limitations for projects that primarily have a social sciences or humanities research question and hypothesis.

The formation of a single new funding instrument is part of the policy of NWO to realise a major simplification of the instruments available and to establish three main forms of funding, namely grants for-individual researchers, grants for curiosity-driven research, and grants for thematic and mission-driven research. This should result in a clearer set of funding instruments.

With the introduction of this single Open Competition instrument, NWO will end the current open competition funding instruments within the social sciences and humanities. This concerns the programmes Internationalisation in the Humanities, Investment Grant NWO Medium, Open Research Area (ORA), Research Talent, Free Competition Humanities and ultimately PhDs in the Humanities as well. For PhDs in the Humanities, the last funding rounds will take place in 2019 and 2020.