Humanities and social science research and culture

We aim to contribute to new knowledge about people, culture and society to strengthen democracy and sustainability.

The most significant challenges of our time cannot be addressed with technical or economic insights alone. They also require an understanding of the human factor and its role in both the challenges and the solutions.

We promote a democratic and sustainable society by supporting humanities projects at the highest academic level through two interconnected programmes:

Free, curiosity-driven basic research
Cross-sectoral research-practice collaboration

These two programmes are mutually necessary prerequisites in a sustainable democracy: Without the freedom for broad, original idea development in the disciplines through basic research, the foundation for cross-sectoral collaboration may eventually dry up. Similarly, the absence of cross-sectoral collaboration will limit the potential for a more direct societal impact of research in concrete solutions, and the emergence of new research questions that may occur when applied to a practical setting.

Impact is also enhanced through collaboration between research and culture. We aim to strengthen this significance by promoting mutual inspiration, dialogue and collaboration between literary art and the humanities. We achieve this through the programme:

Literature and humanities in dialogue

We support free, curiosity-driven basic research within all humanities subjects and closely related social sciences subjects. The selection of the most outstanding projects is done in collaboration with Danish university departments.

Here, new insights are developed at the highest academic level for society’s broad knowledge of people, culture, language, history and society.

We support cross-sectorial research-practice collaboration between humanities researchers and practitioners within the foundation’s other grant areas.

This is where targeted changes and sustainable solutions to specific challenges within A sea in balance, Social initiatives, and Transitions and changes of adult life are developed. Additionally, we create interfaces between literary artistic practice and research.

Knowledge and action from these two programmes are crucial prerequisites for the development of our culture and democracy and for solutions to societal challenges.

In a broader sense, it contributes to shaping us as individuals and society, strengthening an enlightened and informed public, contributing to democratic discourse and empowerment, as well as consultation and policy development.

Strong projects in strong institutions: To ensure the long-term value of grants, we emphasise that strategy development and processes leading to grants occur through dialogue and collaboration with the involved institutions and organisations. This approach aims to promote both the individual project and the institution providing the setting and conditions for it. Strong institutions are a crucial foundation for a robust democracy.

Highest international standards and evaluation processes: To secure funding for projects at the highest professional level, we use competitive processes and involve external international external experts in the evaluation procedures across all our programmes. For each application, we individually select two to three experts in the specific area of the application. They provide thorough written assessments that determine the foundation’s final decisions.

In the Core group and HUMpraxis programmes, all applicants receive the external assessments. This way, we hope that also the applicants who receive rejections can benefit from the process to further develop their projects.