Short-Term Scientific Missions: Call For Applications 2023

 

 

Are you interested in exploring and experimenting with new ways of registering and documenting impact and value of artistic and practice-based research?  The European Forum for Advanced Practices are open for grant applications for short term academic and artistic projects that supports the network in reaching our goals.  

 

The European Forum for Advanced Practices (EFAP) is an open and inclusive research network originating from universities, NGOs and community-based organisations, independent research entities, museums, and a wide range of arts academies. EFAP’s broad goal is to establish a dialog across the boundaries that often separate these contexts and to promote exchange with a focus on emergent forms of artistic- and practice-based research. 

 

What are STSMs? 

Short Term Scientific Missions (STSM) are exchange visits aimed at supporting individual mobility, strengthening existing networks and fostering collaboration between researchers. An STSM should specifically contribute to the scientific objectives of the EFAP, whilst at the same time allowing those partaking in the missions to learn, gain access to specific data, methods or participatory action research conditions not available at their own institutions. 

 

Who can apply? 

STSMs are open for PhDs, PostDocs, and advanced career researchers employed at institutions in countries participating in the EFAP action, or at approved institutions. STSMs must be performed between COST countries – researchers cannot apply for an STSM within their own country. 

 

What can you apply for? 

You can apply for a short-term scientific mission of a minimum duration of 5 calendar days that includes travel. Your STSM needs to end on August 31st, 2023, at the latest. The STSM will be a fixed grant for travelling, accommodation, subsistence expenses and other costs necessary to carry out the project.  

 

Please note that the awarded grant will be paid only after the STSM has been completed – therefore the applicant must have approval and prior financial support e.g., from their own institution. However, specific provisions have been introduced to enable researchers to apply for a pre-payment of 50% of their STSM Grant before or during the STSM. The remaining 50% of the Grant is payable once the administrative requirements have been satisfied after the STSM. Pre-payment is possible if the start date of the STSM is 8 weeks or later after the application has been approved by the Action MC. 

 

Up to a maximum of EUR 2 000 in total can be afforded to each successful applicant. 

Country rates to cover accommodation and meal expenses may be differentiated based on perceived cost of living in the host country. 

 

STSM awards may be combined with other funding sources, but these must be acknowledged in the application. 

 

In your application, you will have to describe the goal of the proposed STSM, how it contributes to the scientific remit of the EFAP COST Action, the planned expenses and the outputs planned as result of the STSM. 

 

For detailed rules regarding eligibility and financial support, please see the COST Annotated Rules and Grant Awarding User Guide 

 

When can you apply? 

A total budget of EUR 10 000 euro has been allocated for the Grant Period 4 (ending on September 30th, 2023). The amounts granted for each STSM will be determined during the evaluation process. The call opens on February 15, and will be continuously OPENED until all money is granted. Applications can be submitted any time until the end of allocation. However, the STSM Calls will be subjected to monthly cut-off dates by the end of the month, when aspects such as the geographical distribution of applicants, gender balance, or balance across work packages will be assessed. The STSMs should take place between March 1st and August 31st, 2023. 

 

How can you apply? What is the application process? 

  1. Applicants must complete, submit and download the STSM application form online at: https://e-services.cost.eu/activity/grants/add  

  1. Applicants must send their application form and the relevant supporting documents for evaluation by email entitled STSM-Name of applicant to Marta Materska-Samek m.materska-samek@uj.edu.pl, EFAP STSM coordinator, and Mari Sanden mari.sanden@ntnu.no, EFAP Grant Holder Manager  

  1.  

  2. The list of supporting documents to be submitted includes: 

  • Letter of invitation from the Host Institution confirming that they can undertake the STSM on the given dates should their application be approved. 

  • Letter of support from the Home Institution. 

  • The submitted STSM application form. 

  • Budget requested by the applicant. 

  • An overview of the proposed activities to be carried out, a workplan for the visit, justification for the choice of the Host Institution, benefits to the EFAP Action, benefits to the Applicant (maximum 4 standard pages). 

  • A full C.V. (including a list of academic publications – if applicable). 

  1. The EFAP STSM coordinator organises expert assessment of the STSM proposal along with the COST EFAP Core Group.  

  1. The Grant Holder sends the applicant a grant letter. 

  1. After the STSM, the investigator submits a scientific report to the STSM Host and STSM coordinator within 30 days after the end date of the activity or 15 days after the end of the Grant Period, whichever date comes first.  

This must include:  

  • the purpose of the mission;  

  • description of work carried out;  

  • description of main results;  

  • plan of future collaborations with Host (if applicable);  

  • planned publications resulting from STSM (if applicable);  

  • confirmation of successful STSM by Host. 

  1. For dissemination purposes, the successful applicants will be required to prepare a brief for the Action’s website including name, institution, research interest, summary of research completed in STSM. 

  1. STSM Coordinator and Action Chair (or Vice-Chair, in case of any conflict of interest) approve the final report. The Grant Holder executes payment to the STSM Applicant. 

What are the criteria for awarding STSM? 

The selection of successful STSM applicants will be done in consideration of: 

  1. the scope of the proposed mission and the possible contribution to the current Grant Period Goals of the EFAP Action; 

  1. relevance of the mission to the scientific objectives of the EFAP Action MoU; in particular, how the proposal is related to a specific Working Group of the Action;  

  1. feasibility of the work plan; 

  1. declared outputs of collaboration (joint publications, collaborative projects, presentation in a COST Action Meeting, etc), 

  1. the academic excellence of the candidate (or promise of excellence in case of the ECIs),  

  1. created synergies with EIT Culture &Creativity.  

There will be special considerations made with respect to supporting COST policies on promoting gender balance, enabling Early Career Investigators (ECI), and broadening geographical inclusiveness. 

  

EFAP Grant Period Goals 2023 

1: Identifying key readiness criteria for advanced practices in culture and creativity to adapt to and contribute to the green and digital transition in line with the New European Bauhaus and 2030 goals of the European Green Deal 

2: Enhanced and updated understanding of the challenges and opportunities for the advanced practices in relation to just transitions and with a focus on remote and peripheral areas, marginalized and underprivileged contexts, minorities and migrant communities 

3: Re-contextualize and decolonize the very notion of innovation by pushing it beyond well-known patterns of centralization, extractivism and exploitation and by launching into the context of EIT C&C the idea of a triple loop of participatory, anticipatory and emancipatory practices 

  

EFAP Objectives

EFAPs primary objective is to initiate and expand a network of researchers, practitioners, and theorists from across Europe who are actively shaping innovative and transformative forms of practice-based research across and among many artistic and academic fields, industry, the private sector, and civil society. 

  

STSM applications will be evaluated based on how the project can support the EFAP Action in reaching one or more of the EFAP objectives: 

1. identify and locate emerging resources (including actors and stakeholders) and adjacencies in order to develop typologies for understanding Advanced Practices 

2. compile practical, provisional references of current terminology used to describe Advanced Practices 

3. assemble a ‘catalogue of strategies’ that highlights evolving differences in how practitioners’ have sought to explain the advanced character of their projects over time and/or in various contexts 

4. compile a dossier of organizational materials that document diverse institutional efforts to initiate and evaluate Advanced Practices at various stages of development 

5. initiate ‘birds of a feather’ / special-interest groups that focus on core aspects of Advanced Practices 

6. connect networks of diverse institutional and non-institutional stakeholders who recognize the value of exchange surrounding Advanced Practices 

7. establish shared vocabularies and categories to advance debate and dynamic evaluation of nonscientific research activities 

8. lay key foundations for greater private sector involvement (e.g., corporations and financial institutions) 

9. formalise frameworks around Advanced Practices as a step toward translating them into curricular development in three cycle education and early-stage researcher training 

10. facilitate the work being done within academic and cultural institutions who have recently founded programs featuring such advanced practices and are in the process of articulation suitable criteria for their implementation