Research Council for Culture and Society funded Academy Projects that renew science

Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Culture and Society has granted funding for 73 Academy Projects with a total of 81 subprojects. Based on these decisions, the Research Council funds Academy Projects with 35 million euros. The Academy Project is the most important funding instrument of the Research Council for promoting the impact and renewal of research.

In addition to high scientific quality of the research plan, the Research Council paid special attention to projects that combine high quality with strong academic and societal impact and/or science renewal. According to the Research Council, it is important that Academy Projects include researchers who are at different stages of the research career. However, the focus is on promoting postdoctoral careers.

In the September 2018 call, 25 million euros in additional funds earmarked for the Academy of Finland in the state budget were used to support the younger generation of researchers. The Academy decided to distribute these funds in Academy Projects. The Research Council for Culture and Society used the special budget authority reserved for early-career researchers in 14 of the funded projects.

 “Due to funding reserved for early-career researchers’ Academy Projects, we could grant funding for 18 per cent of the Academy Project applicants. Early-career applicants succeeded in the call for Academy Project funding. Most of the early-career researchers who received funding now would have been funded even without the additional funds. Gender equality has improved compared to many previous calls”, says Sami Pihlström, the chair of the Research Council for Culture and Society.

 “This round, the applications were reviewed in panels that had a wider scope and more multidisciplinary panelists than before. The Council will consider the development of the decision process based on the feedback it has received”, Pihlström says. According to the feedback given by the reviewers, the experts in the Research Council’s panels felt that the research plans they reviewed were within the scope of their expertise and that the panels as a whole were appropriate.   

Examples of funded Academy Projects with high social impact

Anu Korhonen from the university of Helsinki leads the Nordic Nightmares 1400‒2020 project which crosses disciplinary boundaries. It is a new initiative to understand the past and the present of Finnish people. The project goes against mainstream by highlighting the cultural and social dimensions of dreaming. The main objective is to find out what Finnish nightmares have been about in different eras and if they have changed or if they recur. The results of the project offer a deeper perspective to nightmares that before. The research is based in Finland, but it highlights the heterogeneity of the population.

Johannes Riquet from the University of Tampere examines the poetics and politics of Arctic geography in contemporary fiction and art in the light of previous Arctic folklore and discussion. After the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, the Arctic regions have been the subject of emphatic public discussion. The project studies the ways contemporary culture reinvents established representations of the Arctic landscape and geography.

Timo Kaartinen from the University of Helsinkistudies modern religious movements which claim that they produce ethics by practising disciplined virtues, codes, and habits that clearly differ from the ethical problems and choices of everyday life. The project’s global and comparative perspective tries to separate altrernative sources of an ethical impulse from religion, notions of society, and taking other people into account in the everyday.