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The Volkswagen Foundation believes that transdisciplinary research is a promising way of tackling major future issues. In the following interview, team leader Adelheid Wessler explains how the Foundation wants to create new funding opportunities to help establish this methodological approach over the long term – alongside basic and discipline-defined research.

Liberal democracy is a basic prerequisite for a scientific landscape with independent freedom of research. But how can we protect our democratic structures? And what dangers are they exposed to? Ten newly funded research projects are dedicated to these and other highly topical questions of democracy research.

In the following statement, the Volkswagen Foundation reaffirms its commitment to the protection of democracy and academic freedom.

In the current call of the funding initiative "Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies", the foundation is testing a new review process for the first time: "Distributed Peer Review". In this interview, Dr. Hanna Denecke, team leader in the "Exploration" profile area, explains the experiment.

The new funding offer within the framework of zukunft.niedersachsen is aimed at professors and postdocs at universities and non-university research institutions in Lower Saxony. Funding is available for collaborative and individual projects on innovative diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to combat rare diseases.

With this joint call, the Novo Nordisk Foundation (Denmark), Wellcome (UK) and the Volkswagen Foundation are funding multi-perspective research into the interactions between mobility and health. Deadline for pilot projects: March 25, 2024. Online Q&A on Feb. 15., 2024, 9 to 10 AM CET and 4 to 5 PM CET