New funding initiative addresses social inequality

Finite resources, social inequality, climate change, terrorism - the world is facing major challenges. The UN's "Sustainable Development Goals" constitute a social contract for the world community. They are a contribution towards attaining an economically, socially and ecologically sustainable future. The Volkswagen Foundation, together with partner foundations in Europe, wants to underscore the important role played by the sciences in reaching the SDG targets by offering a new scheme of research funding. Initially, support is given to international cooperation projects doing research on social inequality. Each successful application can be funded with up to 1.5 million Euro. The first closing date for applications is October 30, 2018.

Social inequality is the first of a total of four topics that will be addressed by the new funding initiative "Global Issues - Integrating Different Perspectives". Despite the generally positive economic growth of recent decades, empirical analysis of certain socio-economic and socio-cultural dimensions confirms that inequality has increased - both on national as well as international levels: Millions of people worldwide continue to be excluded from education, health care and social participation.

The Volkswagen Foundation's call launched in cooperation with Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden, Novo Nordisk Fonden, Denmark, and Compagnia di San Paolo, Italy, focuses on topics that hold promise of innovative knowledge gains in inequality research. Proposals should therefore concentrate on transfer processes or the stability of social inequality, preferably against the background of one of the following aspects: institutions and networks, resource distribution and heritage, technological change and digitalization, or socio-ecological processes of inequality. Projects involving the cooperation of three to five partners, in particular from the social sciences, can apply for up to 1.5 million Euro, with a term of four years each.

In the framework of the initiative "Global Issues - Integrating Different Perspectives", all topics are to be analyzed under a significantly expanded perspective. Therefore, the comprehensive involvement of researchers from Africa, Asia, or Latin America is a crucial requirement for funding. The new funding offer aims to develop an explicitly global perspective and, at the same time, to strengthen non-European participants in their role as research partners.

Specifically, this means supporting project consortia with one partner based in a European high income country (preferably in one of the countries where one of the cooperating Foundations is located) working together with two or three partners from middle and low(est) income countries in symmetrical partnership. These constellations serve the desired integration of different perspectives: It is about gaining wider access to problems, perceptions, or options for action, bringing together different (regional) perspectives and knowledge carriers - and in turn gaining a new perspective on seemingly familiar things.

Further topics under the umbrella of the funding initiative "Global Issues" are in preparation for the coming year and a half:

• Heritage and Change
• Medicine and Global Health
• Human-environment Relationships.

Here, too, cooperation between several European foundations is being prepared.