DFG Individual Research Grants (Sachbeihilfe)
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG)
The central bottom-up instrument of German research funding and the one most social work academics in Germany will use. Any qualified researcher at a German institution can propose a project with a clearly defined topic and duration, in any discipline, with no submission deadline at all — proposals go in when they are ready, via the elan portal. A distinctive sub-track matters for the field: 'long-term projects' in the humanities and social sciences carry continuous funding for seven to twelve years, which is what makes cohort studies, longitudinal welfare research and large corpora feasible.
- Indicative award
- Amount not published (varies by call)No maximum grant figure is published on the programme page; budgets are built from the project's actual needs and set out in the programme guidelines. No figure is asserted here.
- Timing
- Rolling / openNo specific published date recorded. This funder publishes a cycle rather than a date, and this database does not invent one.No submission deadline — a first proposal may be submitted at any time. Funding duration follows project need, as a rule several years; the humanities and social sciences long-term project track runs 7 to 12 years.
- Who can apply
- Postdoctoral, Early-career faculty, Mid-career & senior, Any faculty rank
- Eligibility
- Open to qualified researchers who as a rule hold a doctorate and work at a German research institution — universities and non-university institutes. Researchers at purely commercial institutions are excluded, as is anyone unable to publish their findings openly. Nationality is not a gate; institutional affiliation in Germany is. Renewal proposals must arrive at least six months before existing funds run out.
- SSWR clusters
- Topics
- investigator-initiated research · longitudinal research · all disciplines
- Apply at
- https://www.dfg.de/en/research-funding/funding-opportunities/programmes/individual/research-grants
- This entry
- Curated by the working group. Written 2026-08-07. Funder link last confirmed to resolve on 2026-09-25.
Amounts and dates on this page are indicative and are maintained by people rather than scraped. Funders change ceilings, windows and eligibility without notice; confirm all details at the source above before applying.
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