NEXT – 'Dual Use' of Ideas and Concepts from the Humanities and Social Sciences
VolkswagenStiftung (Volkswagen Foundation)
Germany's largest private research funder is asking how concepts generated inside the social sciences get lifted out of context and repurposed for anti-liberal, anti-scientific or anti-democratic ends — the classic example being 'knowledge is socially constructed' flattened into 'all truth is opinion' and used to delegitimise research. For social work this is unusually close to home: trauma, resilience, safeguarding, empowerment and vulnerability are all discipline-born concepts that circulate in politics and media in mutated form. Grants fund small interdisciplinary teams to trace that transf
- Indicative award
- Amount not published (total award)Grants of up to EUR 450,000 or up to EUR 650,000 depending on project format, with universities able to claim up to 10 percent overhead. Euro figures; numeric fields left null because the schema carries no currency field.
- Timing
- Periodic callsPeriodic calls · OctPublished deadline: 2026-10-06 — 53 days awayApplication deadline 6 October 2026 at 14:00. Online Q&A sessions were scheduled for 11 August (German) and 8 September (English). Funding decisions roughly six months after the deadline; projects run up to two years.
- Who can apply
- Postdoctoral, Early-career faculty, Mid-career & senior, Any faculty rank
- Eligibility
- Applicants must hold a doctorate and be affiliated with a German university or non-university research institution; the foundation does not fund private individuals or for-profit entities. Proposals are made by teams of two to three researchers from the humanities, cultural studies and the social sciences. International collaborators may join, but a German institution normally leads and holds the grant.
- SSWR clusters
- Topics
- knowledge transfer · democracy and disinformation · concept misuse · science and society
- Apply at
- https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/funding/funding-offer/next-dual-use-ideas-and-concepts-humanities-and-social-sciences
- This entry
- Curated by the working group. Written 2026-08-07. The funder link has not yet been machine-checked.
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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