European funds for social experimentations

European grants in the field of social experimentation
Deadline:  15/12/2011.

This call offers to applicants the possibility to develop social experimentation projects according to the following protocol/steps:

• Design of the policy intervention: a rigorous description of the logically structured set of actions envisaged as part of the policy reform should be provided. It should ensure that the different incentives, opportunities, or constraints to which the population will be confronted with are identified and described

• Design of the experimentation method: preference will be given to the random assignment method that randomly assigns the potential beneficiaries of the policy/interventions to either a treatment group or a comparison group. Other evaluation method such as the quasi-experimental design (non-randomized assignment) may be considered as long as the impact of the interventions being tested is credibly ascertained. The expected outcomes of the interventions should be stated in clear and measurable terms to serve as yardsticks for determining the extent of the policy intervention's success.

• Lessons for policy design: a rigorous analysis and interpretation of the results should be put in place with a view to arriving at shared conclusions about the up-scaling potential of the tested policies taking into account elements such as the context, in which the policy has to be implemented, the feasibility, the acceptability and the timeliness of the proposed solutions.

Scope

EU grant funds in the ICT sector

DEADLINE:1st June 2011

Topics:

Digital content: 

•  Aggregating content in Europeana
•  Digitising content for Europeana
•  Raising awareness of Europeana and promoting its use  

For further information post a comment or email me at: infonetwork@igcsas.it

Participants:
Any legal entities (e.g.SME, University, research centre..) from EU Member States or Associated Countries.

CULTURE – COOPERATION PROJECTS WITH MEXICO

DEADLINE: MAY  3^RD, 2011.

The Programme aims to enhance the cultural area shared by Europeans, which is based on a common cultural heritage, through the development of cooperation activities among cultural operators from countries taking part in the Programme, with a view to encouraging the emergence of European citizenship.

BENEFICIARIES:

The only eligible applicants are public or private organisations with legal personality whose main activity is in the cultural field (areas of cultural or creative activity) and whose head office is in one of the following countries:

•  the Member States of the European Union,
• Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway
• Croatia, Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. 

 Projects must involve cultural cooperation with at least one partner from Mexico

Cultural organisations are given support for projects to work together across borders and to create and implement cultural and artistic activities.

The aim is to help organisations, such as theatres, museums, professional associations, research centres, universities, cultural institutes and public authorities from different countries participating in the Programme to cooperate so that different sectors can work together and extend their cultural and artistic reach across borders.

Objectives:

• promotion of the trans-national mobility of people working in the cultural sector;
• support for the trans-national circulation of cultural and artistic works and products;
• promotion of inter-cultural dialogue.

 For further information:

http://www.igcsas.com/

infonetwork@igcsas.it

SME Initiative on Digital Content and Languages

DEADLINE: First stage (short proposals) 28 April 2011

TARGET OUTCOMES

a) Bootstrapping a data economy:

• To maximise reuse of digital content resources by making them easy to find, evaluate and integrate.
• To foster reuse of digital content resources by providing guarantees and fair incentives for their creators and maintainers.
• To develop robust and highly usable new services demanded by citizens and businesses (especially SMEs) and create value by correlating independently produced datasets or extracting valuable information not foreseen by the original data producer.

b) Community building and best practices: Produce rigorous studies on the actual or projected economic impact of digital resources pooling as a function of well defined parameters such as the size of resources, user populations, socio-economic sectors, and software stacks adopted.

c) Sharing language resources:

• To make more effective the acquisition of language resources exploiting automated and/or collaborative means
• To contribute to an open exchange place based upon the concerted pooling of resources having a significant potential for reuse
• To show the concrete impact of using, combining or repurposing the above resources in a given use context, in terms of improved functionality, maintainability, scalability and portability of new systems and technologies.

d) Building consensus and common services: Actions under this heading must help establish mechanisms, forums and support services to (i) coordinate efforts, reach consensus, mobilise the community at large, and (ii) set up and manage the planned electronic trading facilities.

SENIOR RESEARCHERS GRANT- SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

DEADLINE: 6 April 2011

MAIN AREAS OF INTERVENTION:

• Individuals, institutions and markets: economics, finance and management
• Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour: sociology, social anthropology, political science, law, communication, social studies of science and technology
• The Human Mind and its complexity: cognition, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and education
• Cultures and cultural production: literature, visual and performing arts, music, cultural and comparative studies
• The study of the human past: archaeology, history and memory. 
• Environment, space and population: environmental studies, demography, social geography, urban and regional studies

Applicants for the  ERC Advanced Grant are expected to be active researchers and to have a track-record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years.

Minimum number of participants: At least 1 independent legal entity established in one of the Member States, or one of the associated countries. 

 

RESEARCHERS’ GRANT FUNDS

The European Research Council (ERC) funds every year excellent research projects in any scientific discipline aiming at broadening the scientific and technological knowledge ("frontier research"). Top researchers of any nationality and  from anywhere in the world can apply, as long as  their ERC project will be carried out in a public or private institution based in Europe ( EU Member State  or Associated Country ). The grants are for up to 5 years.

KEY POINTS:

• All fields of research are eligible
  
• All researchers are eligible: from any country in the world, regardless of nationality, type of institution, or age 
  
  
  
  Two types of ERC grants:

• Starting Grants, for the best researchers with 2 to 10 years of experience after their PhD;
  
• Advanced Grants, for top research leaders, with at least 10 years of experience and significant research achievements
  

• Attractive long-term funding: each project can receive up to 2 Million € (for Starting Grants) or up to 3.5 Million € (for Advanced Grants), for up to 5 years
  
• Principal Investigators and their research team are supported: no trans-national partnerships nor consortia are required
  

 

The ERC has yearly calls for proposals covering all scientific fields: Life Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities, Physical Science and Engineering

For further information and news, contact us at infonetwork@igcsas.it

Social Sciences and Humanities Starting Grant

If you are a young researcher and your research project is dealing with:

-Individuals, institutions and markets;

-Institutions, values, beliefs and behavior;

-Environment and society;

-The Human Mind and its complexity;

-Cultures and cultural production;

-The study of the human past

contact us!

For further information: infonetwork@igcsas.it – Tel. +39 011 6606561