Our Funding Portfolio
The Volkswagen Foundation is dedicated to the support of the humanities and social sciences as well as science and technology in higher education and research. It funds research projects in path-breaking areas and provides assistance to academic institutions for the improvement of the structural conditions for their work.
Funding portfolio
We focus our funding activities on selected initiatives. By means of these initiatives, we endeavor to provide effective stimuli for research and to establish forward-looking topics.
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zukunft.niedersachsen: Innovative diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to combat rare diseases
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.
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area of research: rare diseases, personalised medicine, biomedicine, biotechnology, bioinformatics, data sciences
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type of funding: collaborative and individual projects
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Pioneering Research – Exploring the Unknown Unknown
The funding offer addresses outstanding post-doctoral researchers and professors universities and research institutes in Germany, international cooperation partners are possible.
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area of research: all disciplines
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up to 1.3 million Euro
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Opus Magnum
The funding offer is aimed at outstanding professors from the humanities and social sciences.
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area of research: humanities, cultural studies and social sciences
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type of funding: funding of a substitute professorship
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Transdisciplinary Approaches to Mobility and Global Health
The call is directed at researchers from HICs and LMICs, in close collaboration with local communities, non-academic stakeholders and other relevant actors. It is jointly initiated by the three independent private foundations Novo Nordisk Foundation (Denmark), Wellcome (Great Britain) and Volkswagen Foundation.
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areas of research: social sciences, life & health sciences
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funding for: international collaborative projects
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Momentum – Funding for Recently Tenured Professors
The funding offer is aimed at professors three to five years after taking up their first tenured professorship at a university in Germany.
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area of research: all disciplines
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type of funding: concepts for the broadening of perspectives
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Earth System Sciences
The offer is aimed at universities in Germany with a focus on geosciences that wish to establish one or two junior professorships with tenure track.
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area of research: Geosciences
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funding for: 1-2 junior professorships with tenure track per University location
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Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies
The funding initiative addresses teams of two or three researchers who aim to explore new and original research spaces.
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area of research: humanities and cultural studies, theoretical social sciences
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type of funding: research projects; funding of a teaching substitute
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Change! Fellowships and research groups
Our target group: Personalities from science who are researching transformation processes jointly with non-academic partners.
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area of research: all disciplines
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funding for: own position, research project
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