Our new podcast episode is devoted NCN’s international cooperation. Justyna Woźniakowska and Dr Malwina Gębalska from the NCN meet Dr Miłosz Miszczyński, NCN call winner, to discuss the currently-open IMPRESS-U and CHANSE calls and share their tips on what to keep in mind when preparing a proposal.
The NCN seeks and develops international partnerships to effectively support Polish teams in their cooperation with foreign partners. An important objective for us is to influence international research policies. “We are involved in what’s going on in Europe for the benefit of Polish research teams and institutions. We belong to the research-funding network Science Europe, which is involved in lobbying in Brussels, and the Era-Learn project, which supports the participation of researchers from our part of Europe in network programs funded by Horizon Europe”, says Justyna Woźniakowska, Head of the International Cooperation Department at the NCN. She then adds that the NCN has always prioritised its mission to create opportunities for active researchers to “conduct joint research with international teams and receive funding in synchrony with their partners”.
The conversation, moderated by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, focuses on two currently-open calls for proposals organised by the NCN in cooperation with other agencies.
IMPRESS-U is a new offering in the NCN call portfolio. It is targeted at Polish researchers planning to conduct research in cooperation with partners from Ukraine or the US and, optionally, from the Baltic countries, i.e. Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. Justyna Woźniakowska emphasises that IMPRESS-U opens up new avenues for the cooperation of Polish teams with American partners. “In NCN grant programmes to date, such opportunities have been few and far between and usually restricted to specific research areas. This call facilitates cooperation in all the disciplines supported by the NSF”, she says. The American agency funds research in any discipline except medical sciences and the humanities. Woźniakowska talks about NCN’s cooperation with the NSF, lays out the terms and conditions of the programme, explains how to find partners and suggests what you might want to keep in mind when preparing a proposal.
In the second part of the episode, our guests discuss Crisis and Well-being, two calls in the humanities and social sciences organised by the CHANSE network. Dr Malwina Gębalska, CHANSE coordinator, gets together with Miłosz Miszczyński from the Leon Koźmiński University in Warsaw, the principal investigator under the Polish part of the HuLog project, which won a grant in the network’s previous call, to discuss the terms and conditions of the network’s programmes. CHANSE calls are open to teams of 4 to 6 partners from the programme’s participating countries. The NCN coordinator emphasises that the experts who evaluate proposals can have really high requirements. “I want to impress on all applicants how important it is to make sure the project is coherent and based on shared premises. It is not enough for it to be the sum of its parts. It has to have a coherent vision…of a given research objective”, Gębalska explains. Miszczyński, in turn, says that the most important and work-intensive aspect of his proposal preparation had to do with laying down the “theoretical framework and making sure that the proposal would clearly show its potential in the field of basic research. If I were to give advice to future candidates, I think I would say: put an emphasis on the importance of the project for the discipline and make sure it is an objectively good research project. Thinking about numbers and technicalities should really be the your last worry”.
Towards the end of the episode, our guests discuss the impact on the NCN’s precarious budget situation on international cooperation. “This is extremely limiting, because we pick up on signals that, for instance, a spark has been kindled for a potential new international partnership, but it is practically impossible to use. This is a problem that really affects us all”, says Justyna Woźniakowska. “We know how demanding the [international] calls can be. We always had good news for applicants, reassuring them that anything that’s recommended for funding will in the end be funded. And now this is no longer so obvious”, adds Dr Malwina Gębalska. This is echoed by the NCN call winner: “It is really important to help researchers, and we need support, because the NCN is a very safe choice when it comes to research-funding institutions. If you want to break out into the wider European research community you need this kind of support. If the support is lower, this makes it more difficult for us to succeed”.
Additional information about the CHANSE calls
- Webinar for Polish research teams
- „Szansa na granty w humanistyce i naukach społecznych” – article in „Forum Akademickie” (in Polish)
Previous episodes:
Podcast #1. Men and women in science
Podcast #2. How we evaluate proposals
Podcast #3. Budget, salaries, mobility
