Call: Preparing for Tomorrow – Societies and Strategies in Times of Transition

The Trans-Atlantic Platform (TAP) is pleased to announce its fifth international funding call, Preparing for Tomorrow: Societies and Strategies in Times of Transition.

In a time of profound global uncertainty—shaped by climate change, pandemics, geopolitical tensions, economic disruption, technological transformation, and epistemic challenges—the call will support innovative, transnational social sciences and humanities (SSH) research that strengthens society’s capacity to anticipate, understand, and respond to future challenges and opportunities.
 

Aim of the call

The Preparing for Tomorrow call will fund collaborative research that advances conceptual, empirical, and normative understanding of how societies envision, prepare for, and respond to uncertain futures. It seeks to generate knowledge that supports resilient, inclusive, and forward-looking strategies, and that informs policy and practice at local, national, and international levels.

Scope and focus

Proposals are invited from transnational research teams to address one or more of the following overarching themes:

• Uncertainty: sources, costs, communication, and improvement
• The many faces of the future and crisis: historical, cultural, and regional perspectives
• Scope and coordination of response strategies
• Normative inquiry into prevention and preparation for future crises

Research may draw on a wide range of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, theoretical, methodological, and applied approaches within SSH, including qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, historical, and future-oriented methodologies.

The detailed scope of the call as well as all call documents can be found on the call website(externer Link).

Key features

The call will:

• Support international and interdisciplinary collaboration across countries on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
• Encourage engagement with policymakers, communities, and other stakeholders.
• Promote diversity within research teams, including the involvement and development of early career researchers.
• Address both risks and opportunities arising from societal, political, technological, and environmental change.

Information for DFG applicants

Eligibility

Researchers in Germany, or those working at a German research institution abroad, who have completed their academic training (a doctorate as a rule) are eligible to apply for DFG research grants. You are not eligible to submit a proposal if you work at an institution that is not non-profit or does not allow immediate publication of research findings in a generally accessible form.

DFG funds basic research but accepts a share of up to 30 % practice-led/applied research in the German part of the proposal. 

Please note that some non-university research institutions have a duty to cooperate(interner Link) with German universities.  

More information on eligibility rules and FAQ can be found on the DFG website(interner Link).

German Project Part

The German project part must be in a discipline belonging to the Humanities or Social Sciences. However, e.g. computer science researchers in a Digital Humanities project are eligible. If you are in doubt, please contact the DFG head office.

Budget

German applicants have to choose a funding organization. Projects can either request funding from DFG or from DLR/BMFTR, not from both.

The maximum budget that can be requested from DFG is 400,000 EUR per project (not per German applicant). DFG has allocated 3.2 million EUR for this T-AP call.

Please use this template for the DFG Budget and Justification of Resources(Download). Applicants can request the usual modules/budget items for a regular Research Grant(interner Link) (Sachbeihilfe). 

DFG-specific Documents

Depending on which modules are requested, German applicants are required to submit additional documents. This concerns in particular the statement from the employer for the module Temporary Positions for Principal Investigators (Eigene Stelle), the statement by the university for the Replacement Module (Vertretung) and the vote from the ethics committee where one is necessary.

Results of Previous Calls

• Results of First T-AP Call "Digging into Data(externer Link)"
• Results of Second T-AP Call "Social Innovation(externer Link)"
• Results of Third T-AP Call "Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World (RRR)(externer Link)"
• Results of Fourth T-AP Call "Democracy, Governance & Trust(externer Link)"

Contact Information

General Mailbox: t-ap@dfg.de(externer Link)

Administration of the call:

• Sigrid Claßen(externer Link), Humanities and Cultural Studies, phone +49 (0)228 885-2209
• Dr. Anna Knaps(externer Link), Social and Behavioural Sciences , phone +49 (0)228 885-3031
• Dr. Niklas Hebing(externer Link), Humanities and Cultural Studies, phone +49 (0)228 885-2949