Interdisciplinary Research Practice - Collaborating to Address Societal Challenges

Equal partnership collaboration that creates changes and solutions to societal challenges

In the so-called HUMpraxis programme, which focuses on research-practice collaborations, we aim to promote equal collaboration and knowledge exchange across sectors: between researchers in the humanities and social sciences and practitioners in the social, environmental, and adult life transition domains. The goal is to generate both original research results and tangible changes in practice and to translate them into sustainable solutions to current societal challenges, fostering a democratic and sustainable society on an informed and inclusive basis.

The ’human factor’ plays a crucial role in several of society’s major challenges in these areas and potential solutions to them.

Humanities and social sciences, with their focus on the ’human factor,’ can contribute research-based development, insight, new understanding and solutions to address the challenges these three areas face.

Professionals from practice can contribute with professional knowledge and insight into urgent issues, everyday conditions and the systemic and organisational perceived opportunities and barriers within these areas.

We aim to strengthen and highlight this societal value creation through grants for cross-sectoral, closely integrated research and development projects, where research expertise and practical expertise engage in equal collaboration and interaction throughout the entire process, from formulating the project idea to realising changes and solutions.

The fields of humanities, social sciences, social issues, the environment and transitions and changes of adult life are significant areas of focus in our philanthropic work. This provides us with a unique opportunity to support collaborations and knowledge dissemination across different sectors in society for the benefit of citizens in these areas.

Social initiatives
We seek projects focusing on social sustainability for individuals, children, youth and adults in socially vulnerable positions, aiming to amplify their voices and empowerment for greater participation in societal communities and the democratic society.

We expect project proposals to be based on a concrete context in practice and be developed in close collaboration between researchers, practitioners, civil society and public stakeholders. We also emphasise model-creating in the form of new ideas, tools and methods, the testing of development initiatives in practice as well as the anchoring and dissemination of the efforts so the social boost is made lasting and useful for others.

Environment
We want projects that focus on sustainable solutions within society’s major nature, climate and environmental challenges, including the marine environment. This could be by increasing target groups’ empowerment or participation in initiatives, or by promoting the dissemination of new knowledge or changed practices.

Common to the projects is a requirement for a positive environmental benefit, e.g. in relation to circular economy, regeneration, waste management and recycling, local climate solutions, etc. We emphasise solution-oriented methods and forms of cooperation that can promote democratic participation as well as the dissemination and scalability of solutions.

Transitions and changes of adult life
We want projects that focus on psychological barriers in people aged 55+ in relation to their empowerment, motivation and desire to participate in local communities.

We expect project proposals to be based on a concrete context in practice and developed in close collaboration between researchers, practitioners, civil society and public stakeholders.

The project should identify a societal issue within one or more of the three grant areas described above, and contribute to its development and solutions.

The overall project must significantly contribute to achieving the objectives of the practical part with impact and in ways or levels that would not be possible without the research component.

The research and practice components should be well-established and closely integrated into the overall project design, serving as prerequisites for each other. Pure research projects or pure development projects will not be funded.

The project should involve both humanities university researchers (and possibly other relevant researchers from different research institutions) and practitioners from the public and/or civil society in closely integrated collaborative relationships throughout the project’s various parts. The expression of interest will only be considered if the collaborative relationships with practice are established at the time of application and not merely planned.

Both practice and research institutions can apply and thus administer the grant. The research component must be carried out by university researchers from humanities disciplines, i.e. all humanities and closely related social science disciplines (anthropology, psychology, political science and sociology) as well as the humanities part of public health science. Other disciplines may also be included in the project as a supplement.

Permanent university researchers at the lecturer or professor level must be involved.

University researchers from professional schools and other institutions with research activities can participate in projects alongside university researchers.

The project must contain basic scientific elements, i.e. include theory development and not solely consist of follow-up research, data collection or evaluation. Projects where the research component is solely follow-up research will not be considered.

Up to DKK 5.7 million can be applied for, but smaller projects are also welcome.

Salary funds for permanent university researchers should be limited and at most constitute 10% of the requested amount. However, up to 15% if permanent employees from university colleges participate. Any salary funds for permanent employees at university colleges are included in the 15%.

The project must not directly promote specific commercial interests, purposes or parties.

Applications that do not meet the requirements will not be considered.

The programme has annual open calls subject to competition. In the first stage, expressions of interest are submitted using the foundation’s template.

All expressions of interest are reviewed by the secretariat in an interdisciplinary panel with senior advisers from the relevant grant areas. They assess and prioritise the expressions of interest in relation to the overall purpose of the programme. The secretariat prepares recommendations for the board, which makes decisions on which expressions of interest to invite for full applications.

All applicants receive a reply. Those applicants invited to submit full applications are granted up to DKK 100,000 in project maturation funds for further collaboration on the development of the final application. All invitees are offered individual guidance meetings with the secretariat.

The full applications are sent for external evaluation. For each application, two external experts, both specialising in the specific research and practice area of the application, are individually selected, one being a foreign research expert from the Nordic countries and the other a practice expert from Denmark

The external experts individually prepare thorough written assessments. These assessments form the basis for the secretariat’s recommendations to the foundation’s board, which makes the final prioritisation and decisions on grants and rejections.

Typically, five to six HUMpraxis projects will be granted within the annual grant framework of up to DKK 30 million. The success rate is thus approximately one-fourth to one-third among the invited full applications.

We aim not only to promote individual projects, but also to systematically contribute to knowledge sharing and capacity building for research-practice collaboration, both within universities and in surrounding societal institutions, so that new projects do not have to start from scratch.

This is achieved through network meetings for our funded projects, where experiences can be exchanged and gathered. These experiences benefit both the projects and the foundation in further developing the programme, as well as in providing guidance for future projects. This effort has also resulted in the attached publications.

Additionally, in collaboration and partnership with the Crown Princess Mary Center at the University of Copenhagen, we have established the Copenhagen Impact Lab network. It consists of decision-makers from universities, foundations and public and private organisations committed to promoting research-practice collaborations. Through ongoing network meetings and a large annual conference, we facilitate the dissemination of project experiences and contribute to capacity building.

This collaboration has also led to joint work on a series of publications intended to serve as a publicly accessible resource bank for knowledge dissemination and broader capacity building.

In HUMpraxis, the criteria for prioritisation (of expressions of interest) are determined by the overarching purpose of the call:

Formal requirements: University and humanities affiliation, within area requirements, established collaborations, no commercial interests.
Significance to society (relevance, originality).
Significance to research (relevance, originality).
Research (emphasis on basic research, theory development, originality).
Practice (integration, originality, methodological innovation).
Development/output (specification of the development part, scaling, research impact).
Collaboration format (potential, maturity, exchange format, equality, concurrency).