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The new call for proposals for "Pioneering Research - Exploring the Unknown Unknown" offers higher funding amounts and longer funding periods. Pavel Dutow and Theresa Kratzsch explain what has changed and who can apply. Application deadline for the program is Sept. 3, 2024.

Why the Volkswagen Foundation also funds projects involving experiments with animals.

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