Momentum – Funding for Recently Tenured Professors

The Volkswagen Stiftung revised the call for proposals for the funding line “Momentum”. Proposals can be submitted by 01 June 2022. The funding offer is available for excellent professors who were appointed between three to five years ago (three to six years for the 2022 call). Professors who are granted the funding should be tenured by the time the funding period begins. Funding is provided for strategic concepts for the implementation of a further development of the professorship.

The call is open to all disciplines and invites professors from the social sciences and humanities as well as natural and life sciences and engineering to apply. Furthermore, it is open to professors of all nationalities, as long as they hold a tenured professorship at a German university. Research projects, however, can NOT be funded.

Funding can be granted for a period between four to six years. Depending on the specific requirements of the particular discipline, funding can amount to up to one million euros but is only awarded in addition to the basic equipment to be provided by the university.

The measures with which strategic and structural development of a professorship can be supported vary according to the particular discipline and may depend on the academic environment and location. In order to be able to take these variations into consideration and to react to dynamic changes, the call allows for flexibility. In any case, proposals should address the goal of widening the perspective in research and/or how it is to be achieved. PhD projects are excluded from funding.

The application procedure contain three stages:

• Stage 1: Submission of a CV and a short video (90s).
• Stage 2: Detailed proposal on the strategic development of the professorship
• Stage 3: Presentation of the proposal to an interdisciplinary panel of reviewers.

You can find further information here. The English website has not been up-dated yet.

Please contact Division I well in advance if you are planning to submit a proposal for this funding line:

Dr. Katharina Bolle
Research Support, Support of Early-Stage Researchers
University of Mannheim
Division I | L 1, 1 | 68131 Mannheim
E-Mail: katharina.bollemail-verwaltung.uni-mannheim.de