“Despite various difficulties, I have been more able to spread my wings here”, says Prof. Anna Matysiak. The economist and demographer from the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Warsaw tells Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz about her research, the research conditions she has found in Poland, and the best ERC application strategy.

prof. Anna Matysiak, fot. archiwum prywatne Professor Anna Matysiak has worked at the Warsaw School of Economics, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She is one of the first winners of the NCN Award (2013); in 2019, she also won an ERC Consolidator Grant. Her research is focused on how family-planning decisions are affected by technology and the rise of remote work and flexible working modes and hours. She also has experience as an expert reviewer in ERC calls.

Warnings that went unheeded

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz: We met at a press conference that proclaimed, among its main slogans, that “Science Is in the National Interest”. Where would we be now if politicians had listened to demographers twenty years ago?

Anna Matysiak: That was really a pivotal moment when they should have listened to population scientists. We were already raising concerns that the number of births in Poland would soon decrease dramatically. The number of women of reproductive age was already relatively low. We knew that if they really ended up having fertility rates as low as we were seeing at that time, i.e. a little over 1 child per woman on average, in twenty more years the number of women of childbearing age would be even lower and the demographic situation in Poland would become dramatic. And this is exactly what has happened.

We still had time to act back then. We knew that those generations of women did want to have children but encountered various roadblocks, including financial problems, difficulties in reconciling jobs with childcare, and very limited access to nurseries and preschools. Now, the situation is quite different: we provide financial support mechanisms for families and daycare for small children, we have a more developed network of preschools, and we are much wealthier as a country. But we have fewer women of childbearing age. If previous generations had borne more children, today our demographic situation would be better.

Of course, demographics is not just about births. It is also about migration and public health. All these factors are important. And, yes, we should have been heard twenty years ago, and we should be heard today. Because today we are faced with new, equally pressing issues.

What should decision-makers hear from you today? What public policy changes require urgent attention?

I think that many of the measures that followed our previous appeals, even if not immediately, did go in the right direction. Financial support mechanisms for families or institutional solutions such as improved access to preschools are definitely examples of positive change. However, an area that is still really not up to scratch is access to healthcare. This affects people at different stages of life: it is a problem for people who are taking their family-planning decisions, for parents of little children, for the middle-aged, and for senior citizens, who have limited access to preventive care. Governments have come and gone, and the problem has not been properly addressed which, of course, is going to have repercussions for everyone.

Even now, the number of people of productive age is decreasing, so we would like to keep those who can work professionally active for as long as possible. But for this to happen, they need to have good access to healthcare. This is a key issue; improvements in healthcare should be our absolute priority.

Another growing challenge is migration. We have welcomed large numbers of refugees from Ukraine; even before the war, we already had economic migrants from that country. In the future, migration pressure from other regions will also increase, because of climate change and because Poland is increasingly wealthy. We need to take in migrants because our working-age population is decreasing, but their integration will pose a challenge. We need to help them learn our language and facilitate their cultural and social integration.

When it comes to fertility, we know that the number of births is on the decline. The problem is that we don’t have enough good data to understand why younger generations of women in Poland are deciding to have fewer children. We need to investigate what barriers are still there and how they affect family-planning decisions. And learn what these new generations of women want in terms of family planning.

Many developed countries, such as Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States or South Korea, collect panel data, which allow respondents to be tracked over a period of many years and analyse their life decisions, such as, for instance, when they start their first job, have their first and second child, all in connection with their situation in other areas of life (having a partner, relationship quality, wealth, employment, health status, plans and attitudes with regard to different aspects of life). In Poland, we don’t have any such data, which makes it difficult to do research and recommend effective solutions.

Why don’t we have it?

In the past, there was a panel study, “Social Diagnosis”, which collected data from the same group of people at two-year intervals; this was used to track their lives and analyse different correlations. Unfortunately, the study was discontinued, and we really need such data today. What we do have is cross-sectional data, that is, data collected at one point in time from a specific group of people. The next dataset is already collected from a different group, so we are not able to track individual careers. And panel data are extremely important for research, be it on education or professional careers, and their correlations with family life.

Another important kind is administrative data. Administrative data are of very high quality, because they are based on facts rather than self-reporting by respondents, which may be prone to error, for reasons such as forgetfulness or unwillingness to disclose information. Such data, of course, don’t include everything; for instance, they lack information about personal attitudes. But what they do contain is extremely precise. In Nordic countries, or countries like the Netherlands or Estonia, researchers can obtain access to registry data in a way that does not allow individual people to be identified. Germany is also improving access to registries.

In Poland, unfortunately, we still don’t appreciate the importance of such data or of laws and regulations that would allow them to be shared with researchers. While attempts to that effect are being made, there is still no legislation to allow it. This seriously hinders our research and our ability to draw conclusions and prepare public policy recommendations. At present, a lot of what we know is based on research done in other countries.

I understand that such data are collected by a very wide range of institutions. Which ones should share them with researchers?

There was this initiative, known as the Integrated Analytics Platform, which was meant to collect administrative data from different institutions, such as the Ministry of Finance, the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), Civil Registry Offices and Employment Offices. It pooled information about the careers pursued by Polish people, their income, children, marriages, etc. So such data already exist; the investment was completed thanks to the shared commitment of Polish officials and researchers. The problem is that there are still no laws that would allow them to be used in research.

And do politicians ever ask you for your recommendations? Some countries have set up parliamentary teams to provide decision-makers with the information they need to take research-driven decisions. A case in point is Luxembourg, where the local equivalent of the NCN has its “delegation” in the parliament.

Ministries do come to us for advice, but these are usually short-term consultations; they might need to draw up a new demographic strategy, for instance, or prepare major changes in legal regulations. In my opinion, Poland doesn’t have enough research institutes whose statutory mission would include evaluating public policies, assessing existing data and analysing the extent to which they are enough for studying social phenomena. Or institutes that would be continually represented at higher levels of power. Now that the government has changed, and along with it new ministerial representatives, contacts with researchers must be built from scratch. This means that we need to explain, to clarify and to build relationships yet again. For us researchers, this is extremely hard to do. We have our duties, teaching obligations, research projects, various administrative and organisational roles at our universities, and even though we really care about sharing our knowledge and shaping public policy, it might be hard for us to get involved on an ad hoc basis. In addition, evaluating policies and creating new policy recommendations is not easy at all, it requires the right kind of data, in-depth analysis and infrastructure (e.g. the panel data that I mentioned before), which takes years to build. Unfortunately, these processes go beyond the political horizon, which is, by its very nature, oriented toward the short term.

Technology, jobs market, parenthood

In your ERC project, you study how globalisation- and technology-driven job market changes affect family-planning decisions. What is their exact impact?

Our research suggests a very strong educational gradient. Those who work in sectors that have deployed automation technologies don’t always lose out on this change. In terms of professional opportunity, the hardest hit are those with low or mid-level educational attainment, while those with a good education can even benefit: they enjoy greater opportunities for growth, higher income levels and more stable jobs. And this in turn affects their decisions on whether to have kids. People who benefit from technological change are more likely to decide to have a child, while those who lose out on it, decide to have children less frequently or do so later in life.

Germany is an interesting example. Our research shows that highly educated employees are less likely to remain childless than people with lower qualifications, which represents a major change with respect to the past. Previously, it was people with lower qualifications who were less likely to be childless; today, the trend is being reversed.

Another interesting finding has to do with flexible forms of employment, such as remote work and flexible hours. Access to such opportunities also privileges those with higher educational attainment levels and a higher position in the job market. These new forms of employment don’t have a significant impact on people’s decision to have their first child, but they do affect their decision to have a second one. They allow them to combine their job with parenting duties, which privileges better educated social groups.

Are these results similar for different countries?

Our research covered Germany, Sweden and the United States. For men, the results turned out to be very similar in all those countries. In sectors where new technologies are replacing traditional work, highly educated men don’t lose out and often even benefit from the change. And our research shows that these men are more likely to decide to have their first child. Men with lower educational attainment enjoy fewer opportunities for professional growth and thus are less likely to have offspring.

As for women, the results are more varied. In Sweden, the trend is not unlike that for men: women with higher education and better job opportunities are less likely to remain childless. In Germany and the US, however, the situation is rather different: women’s professional growth comes into conflict with family planning. This is because men in these countries are less involved in parenting; there is also less state aid available for working mothers and couples as compared to Sweden, which offers better conditions for combining work and family life.

For men in Germany and the US, professional growth increases the likelihood of having children; for women, it is a hindrance. This shows the pivotal role that men’s and women’s changing social roles play in the process of deciding whether to have children. While women’s roles have undergone an immense change – women no longer want to be just mothers, they want to find fulfilment in being a mum and have a career – men’s roles have been very slow to evolve. And this is one of the reasons behind the low birthrates observed in many countries.

And what does it look like in Poland?

Unfortunately, our study doesn’t cover Poland, and it doesn’t because, as I said, we don’t have enough data. We are analysing data from countries that share them. I am collaborating with partners in Sweden, Great Britain, Norway and Germany, we are also using Australian and American data, because these countries provide access to the information we need. I would really love to do research on Poland. A lot of my ideas touch on our problems but I can only do so much here. I was even able to run a study for the Czech Republic – but in Poland, it’s still a challenge.

The social roles of men and women in Poland are in a period of transition. They can no longer be called traditional, but we are seeing tensions and various models still exist side by side. The results for Poland would probably be more like those for Germany, but this is just an educated guess.

Is your project going to propose any policy recommendations?

This is not our main goal, but our research findings can indeed form the basis for policy recommendations. We are also planning to analyse the context present in different countries, including aspects such as their job market institutions, family policy or social attitudes, and their impact on relationships between the job market and decisions about whether to have children. Some public policy guidelines could also be inferred from these analyses.

Based on what we already know, we could mention two key issues. First, we need to provide more support for women, especially those who have many opportunities for professional growth. It is important to make sure that the opportunities that arise in connection with technological change don’t discourage them from having children. Second, we need more support for individuals and couples who are struggling in the job market, especially those with low and mid-level educational attainment, who are at greater risk of suffering the consequences of rapid technological change. For them, new technologies often mean unstable employment or lower job quality.

It seems to me that we will all be threatened by AI very soon. Some creative professions are supposed to disappear in a not-so-distant future.

I am not very worried that new technologies will replace us. What’s more likely is that they will keep changing the way we work and forcing us to adapt. In this sense, I think that work will be more demanding. Rapid technological progress means that we need to invest in continuous learning and upskilling. We are at greater risk of losing our jobs and having to rebrand. Of course, technological progress is good for economic growth and the global position of Poland, but the constant pressure to adapt can make it difficult for people to decide to have children. When you already have one kid and you need to rebrand or learn new skills, you might have little headspace for another one. And this is why those who say technology will help us work less seem unrealistic to me. In reality, I believe the demands on us will increase. For instance, in my job, writing five articles per year might no longer be enough; the technologies that make our work easier might mean that the expectation will now be twenty. And of course, while some tasks can be done faster, we still need time for reflection, we need to interpret our findings.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to continually keep track of changes, adapt, rebrand. In couples, it is men who are more likely to be able to do that, because they get less involved in childcare. This gives them time to build a career and climb the professional ladder. In turn, women, who are saddled with most family responsibilities, often change careers or look for jobs that are more compatible with family life. As a result, there are professional gaps between men and women. Research shows that women with comparable levels of education also enjoy similar opportunities in the job market as men up until the age when it is common to have children. This is when the gap between professional status and pay opens up – and it never really closes again.

However, women are increasingly less likely to accept such inequalities. If we don’t find a way to help them combine a career with family life, if their partners don’t take over half of the tasks involved in childcare and housework, they will be delaying pregnancy or deciding to stay childless more often.

Returning to Poland

You applied for the ERC grant when you were still working in Vienna. But in the end, you decided to return to Poland. .

I won a NAWA Polish Returns grant. I wanted to live here even though I was really afraid to come back, not sure what to expect at my university in Poland. But when I was working abroad I realised that tensions, conflicts and administrative issues come up everywhere.

People I talk to normally disagree. They usually complain of the conditions for doing research in Poland.

The place I worked at in Austria was an excellent international centre for demographic research, but even so, it still had its administrative problems and people issues. And yes, when I came back, I realised I felt good here in Poland. In a sense, I think I can do more over here. I lived in Austria for six years; that may sound like a lot, but in Poland, I know how to move around, how to talk, I know the social codes.

When I returned to Poland, I managed to forge contacts and meet new people very quickly. In Austria, it had taken me much longer. This confirmed to me that I was where I belonged; I can be more effective here. I established a large research team in Poland, and I feel I wouldn’t have been able to do the same in Austria. Despite various difficulties, I have been more able to spread my wings over here.

Thanks to my funding, I was able to hire a fantastic person, a science manager, to manage my projects. Her work shows how incredibly important it is to have such people to support researchers; we should appreciate their contribution, also by rewarding them financially.

The ERC grant winners I’ve talked with before have said that one of their main “application strategies” was to build recognisability. What was yours?

I agree that being recognisable is important. You can earn a name for yourself by publishing, speaking at conferences, visiting international research centres, even for shorter periods, such as two weeks, if you cannot stay longer. This makes people realise, oh, there is this person out there who does this interesting research, even if they haven’t published any findings yet. It’s also important how you present your ideas; if you know how to speak in an interesting way and engage your listeners, you will be looked at differently. When, back in 2018, I won an award for population research from the European Association for Population Studies, which was given to me at the European Population Conference, a friend of mine, also a demographer, said to me: “Grab this opportunity. You stood up there, everyone saw you. You have an idea, write a grant proposal now”. And, indeed, the reviews of my proposal brought up this award a lot. In the eyes of my reviewers, it made me more credible; they knew I was doing high-quality international research and that I could be trusted with doing what I had planned to do.

From my experience on the ERC Consolidator Grant panel, I remember that when we evaluated a proposal, we would focus on its contents, to see whether it was interesting and innovative, but we also considered feasibility. We looked at the previous record of the applicant, their publications, experience in working with different scientists and research contacts that could prove useful in their research project.

ERC in Poland: how to increase our odds of success?

Scientists working in Poland have won fewer than 90 ERC grants out of 16.8 thousand the agency has awarded since it was established. What can we do to win more?

I think that one of the main problems is that few people even apply for ERC grants at all. I noticed this when I sat on the panel: the number of applicants from our region was very low, and this automatically translates into a very low number of grants.

At universities, I often meet researchers who think these grants are out of their league and don’t even try to apply. And in reality, they do have a chance, even if at first they fail. I speak openly about the fact that my first proposal was rejected. I only pulled it off the second time. I know many other people who also won an ERC grant after more than one attempt. What matters is that you don’t get discouraged and keep trying.

Preparing a proposal, however, requires humongous work. In Vienna, I had the great luxury of being able to spend three or four months just reading and analysing the literature. Even though I specialise in the labour market, I still had to delve into a lot of new issues concerning the impact of technology or globalisation. In Poland, especially at universities, where researchers have other duties in teaching, administration and organisation, such ability to focus is much harder to come by.

If I were to write another proposal, I would like to have enough space to reflect in peace, to focus and take my mind off other duties. This would require support and understanding on the part of university authorities. To work on a proposal, researchers need to have the right conditions, which are still difficult to achieve in Poland.

Another problem is the lack of access to sample proposals. I have noticed that some researchers get down to writing theirs without having seen a single well-prepared application. And knowing what a good proposal looks like could help them understand the standards and requirements. At my previous institution, I knew people who had already won such grants, so I could easily look at their proposals. On my own initiative, I also had access to proposals written by co-workers from different countries, for instance, from Italy or Belgium, thanks to international contacts that I had built. This is something that’s still missing here.

Some countries didn’t get many grants in the past but have now made huge headway: Spain or Italy, for example. They keep trying and encourage researchers to apply. At my institute in Vienna, there was even a pressure on us to apply.

I am assuming that the second time around you didn’t submit the same proposal to the ERC. What changes did you introduce between your first and second attempt?

I really, really liked my first proposal. Later on, I submitted it to an Austrian agency, also without much luck. In the end, I abandoned that idea and focused on another one, which was closer to my professional experience: fertility and the job market. This allowed me to show how I could combine two fields I knew really well. And that helped a lot.

Our attempts, even if unsuccessful, always teach us something. There was a time when Polish researchers didn’t know how to write a good proposal for the NCN. And now they do. The same can happen with the ERC: you just need to understand what is important, what you need to emphasise, how to demonstrate that the project is feasible. To do so, you have to consult examples of previously successful proposals and talk with people who have already won ERC grants.

There is still very little support available at universities but it’s important to make sure researchers don’t feel like their efforts are in vain, even if they haven’t won a grant just yet. The proposal can always be improved, resubmitted or submitted to another call, e.g. to the NCN. It is really essential that universities appreciate these efforts and tell them “It’s great that you’ve tried”.

Dr Anna Kula-Pacurar from the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, in cooperation with scientists from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT Polish Center for Technology Development and the Belgian KU Leuven, wins a Weave-UNISONO grant to work on a research project aimed at developing new HIV treatments.

“Towards a functional cure of HIV infection” is a project devised by a Polish research team headed by Dr Kula-Pacurar from the Jagiellonian University in tandem with researchers led by Dr Heng-Chang Chen from the Łukasiewicz Rsearch Network – PORT and Prof. Zeger Debyser from the Belgian KU Leuven. The total funding awarded to the part of the project that will be hosted by Polish research institutions is nearly PLN 3.5 million.

Currently available HIV-1 treatments improve patients’ health and extend their lives but do not provide a complete cure. All project partners have previously developed various methods to target the HIV-1 virus and HIV-infected cells. By pooling their knowledge and experience, they are hoping to tackle the ambitious challenge of developing innovative strategies for a functional cure for HIV.

The proposal was evaluated at Research Foundation Flanders (FWO); the National Science Centre approved the evaluation results under the terms of the Weave programme. This is the first proposal recommended for funding by FWO in its capacity as the lead agency.

Weave-UNISONO ranking list

The Weave-UNISONO call is based on multilateral cooperation between the research-funding agencies that constitute the Science Europe association. It aims to simplify submission and selection procedures for research proposals drawn up by researchers from two or three different European countries in any discipline of science.

The selection process is based on the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), under which only one partner institution is responsible for merit-based review, while the rest simply accept the results.

Under Weave, partner research teams apply in parallel to the lead agency and their relevant domestic institutions. Their joint proposal must include coherent research plans and clearly demonstrate the added value of international cooperation.

The Weave-UNISONO call accepts proposals on a rolling basis. Polish teams wishing to partner up with colleagues from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to read the call announcement carefully and submit their funding proposals.

The Minister of Science, Dariusz Wieczorek, appoints twelve new NCN Council Members, whose term will last until 14 December 2028.

The NCN Council consists of 24 researchers from different scientific fields and research centres. It defines the disciplines or groups of disciplines under which calls for proposals are organised, decides which basic research fields should be prioritised in accordance with the national development strategy and sets the research funding budget for each discipline or group of disciplines.

Half of the council members are replaced every two years. New members are appointed by the Minister of Science from a list submitted by the Identification Team, who nominate their candidates based on submissions made by the research community. This year, there were 116 candidates.

New members (2024-2028):

• Prof. Dr hab. Piotr Bojarski, physicist, University of Gdańsk
• Prof. Dr hab. inż. Renata Ciereszko, biologist, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn
• Prof. Dr hab. inż. Henryk Fiedorowicz, physicist, Military University of Technology in Warsaw
• Prof. Dr hab. Anna Gambin, bioinformatician, University of Warsaw
• Prof. Dr hab. Katarzyna Kijania-Placek, philosopher, Jagiellonian University
• Prof. Dr hab. Piotr Kowalczuk, oceanographer, Institute of Oceanology, PAS
• Dr hab. Marta Marchlewska, psychologist, Institute of Psychology, PAS
• Prof. Dr hab. Przemysław Marciniak, byzantinist, University of Silesia in Katowice
• Prof. Dr hab. Ewa Marcinkowska, biotechnologist, University of Wrocław
• Dr hab. Łukasz Michalczyk, biologist, Jagiellonian University in Kraków
• Prof. Dr hab. inż. Krzysztof Okarma, automation and electronics expert, West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin
• Prof. Dr hab. Krzysztof Rolka, chemist, University of Gdańsk

Current members whose term ends in the middle of December 2026:

• Dr hab. Marta Bucholc (appointed on 6 December 2024), sociologist , University of Warsaw
• Prof. Dr hab. Justyna Chodkowska-Miszczuk, earth sciences and spatial management expert, Nicolaus Copernicus University of Toruń
• Dr Diana Dajnowicz-Piesiecka, lawyer, University of Białystok
• Prof. Dr hab. Tomasz Dietl, physicist, Institute of Physics, PAS
• Prof. Dr hab. Stanisław Karpiński, biotechnologist, Warsaw University of Life Sciences
• Dr hab. inż. Alicja Kazek-Kęsik, chemist, Silesian University of Technology
• Prof. Dr hab. Piotr Kopiec, theologist, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
• Prof. Dr hab. Mariola Łaguna, psychologist, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
• Prof. Dr hab. inż. Krystian Marszałek, biotechnologist, Wacław Dąbrowski Institute of Agriculture and Food Biotechnology - State Research Institute
• Prof. Dr hab. Piotr Roszak, theologist, Nicolaus Copernicus University of Toruń
• Prof. Dr hab. Piotr Skarżyński, doctor and public health expert, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Medical University of Warsaw
• Dr hab. Bogumił Szady, historian, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

NCN Council member profiles

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education scheduled the official induction ceremony of the new council members for Friday, 20 December 2024. On the same day, the Council will also hold its first session to select its new president and permanent committee chairs.

The Council of the National Science Centre has passed resolutions 116/2024 and 130/2024 to express its position on the policy of open access to research publications. It recommends that the NCN Director should not extend the agency’s membership in the “cOAlition S” consortium, but should continue to support OA publishing, with concessions made to the nature of each individual discipline.

In resolution 116/2024, the Council of the National Science Centre recommends that the NCN Director should not extend the agency’s membership in cOAlition S (the current agreement with the consortium expires on 31 December 2024). At the same time, it emphasises that, as of 1 January 2025, the National Science Centre should still continue to support Plan S and encourage its application, but without imposing any final project billing requirements on Polish grant holders with regard to the OA publishing of any work produced during the project. The Council recommends that grant holders should be allowed the freedom and opportunity to list the publications submitted for project billing in the final project report, but they should also be informed that the OA publishing requirement, as laid down in the grant agreement, will not be taken into account during the final project billing process.

In addition, the Council’s resolution 130/2024 explains the central rationale behind resolution 116/2024, which includes both financial and organisational reasons. The Council also makes it clear that its decision not to extend membership in cOAlition S is not a criticism of the very idea of open access to research results; the aim is only to replace the strict requirement that researchers must adhere to Plan S with a recommendation that they publish in OA journals, with concessions made to the nature of each individual discipline.

16 December 2024

The National Science Centre (NCN) is launching the SONATINA 9 call for research projects. The objective of the call is to support the career development of early-stage researchers by creating opportunities for full-time employment and research in Poland and enabling them to gain knowledge and experience during fellowships in first-rate foreign research institutions.

The call is addressed at individuals who have been granted their PhD degree in the proposal submission year or within 3 years prior to the proposal submission year (1 January 2022 - 31 December 2024) or will be granted their PhD by 30 June 2025. The 3-year period may be extended by the career breaks laid down in the Resolution.

Employment under a full-time employment contract must be planned for the principal investigator in the host institution for the project other than the one from which the principal investigator has earned a PhD degree. The principal investigator must complete a foreign fellowship of 3 to 6 months in a foreign research institution.

The Council of the National Science Centre has allocated PLN 40,000,000 for research projects to be carried out under SONATINA 9.

Proposals must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system available at: https://osf.opi.org.pl pursuant to the proposal submission procedure.

The call for proposals in the OSF submission system closes on 17 March 2025, 4 p.m. CET.

As of the calls launched on 15 December 2023, project literature DOES NOT count towards the page limit in the short and full project descriptions.

Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the NCN Council has decided that proposals submitted to NCN calls must not provide for any collaboration between Polish and Russian entities. Proposals providing for such collaboration will be rejected as ineligible.

The results of the call will be published in September 2025.

Significant modifications:

• Monograph publication costs are not eligible if claimed as direct costs.
• Project literature does not count towards the page limit (i.e. 5 pages for short project descriptions and 15 pages for full project descriptions). Only project literature is not included in the page limit.
• A new list of review panels within Life Sciences area is in place.
• Proposals will be evaluated in three categories:
  • A: Project assessment (70%) (scientific quality, feasibility, potential impact)
  • B: Qualifications and achievements of the principal investigator (25%)
  • C: Planned international fellowship (5%)

Please read the call documents herein.

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Who is eligible to apply?

Who can act as the principal investigator?

Are there any restrictions on submitting proposals for research projects under NCN calls?

What are the subjects covered by the call?

What is the project duration?

What is the foreign fellowship duration?

How should the project budget be planned?

Can proposals in this call include application for state aid?

What should be included in a proposal?

What is the proposal evaluation procedure?

What is reviewed in the evaluation of proposals?

Who performs the merit-based evaluation of proposals?

When and how will the results be announced?

Open access publication of research results

Where can additional information be found?

Useful information

Proposals are now being accepted under SONATINA 9 and SHENG 4, which are open, respectively, to researchers within 3 years of earning their PhD and Polish teams working with Chinese partners. The total budget of the two calls equals PLN 86 million.

We are happy to announce the 9th SONATINA call for young researchers. In order to apply, the project’s PI must hold a PhD awarded between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2024, or expect to earn the degree by the end of June 2025. The SONATINA grant provides the funds necessary to cover all project expenses and secure the full-time employment of the PI at a Polish research centre. The PIs are also required to plan and complete a fellowship at a renowned foreign research centre of their choice.

The SHENG call for bilateral international research proposals is organised for the fourth time. This time, funding is available to Polish teams working in cooperation with Chinese partners on basic research projects in any discipline of life sciences (NZ1-NZ9), selected disciplines of art, humanities and social sciences (panels: HS6_01-HS6_08, HS6_14-HS6_15 covering research on human nature and human society), and selected disciplines of physical sciences and engineering (ST4: chemistry, ST5: computer science and information technologies, ST8: production and process engineering, and ST11: materials engineering). Grants under SHENG 3 can go toward funding research tasks, salaries for research team members, scholarships for graduate students and PhD candidates, research equipment and other necessary expenses of the Polish team. The SHENG call is organised jointly by the National Science Centre and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

Budget

The budget of SONATINA 9 is PLN 40 million, up by 100% from the previous edition of the call. The total funding available to Polish research teams under SHENG 4 has also reached a record level: 46 million, a threefold increase over SHENG 3, announced exactly two years ago, which had a budget of just PLN 15 million. These unprecedented levels of funding are possible because of a recent increase in the NCN budget.

Peer review and results

Proposals submitted under SONATINA and SHENG are evaluated by expert teams appointed by the NCN Council under three panels: HS (art, humanities and social sciences), ST (physical sciences and engineering), and NZ (life sciences). The review process consists of two stages. At stage 1, team members prepare independent reviews for each proposal and decide on their final scores together during a panel session. At stage 2, the proposals are submitted for review by external experts, i.e. scientists from around the world who specialise in the specific research field covered by each proposal. In addition, under SONATINA, the PIs are invited to an interview at the NCN offices; their final scores and rankings are then decided at the second panel meeting. Under SHENG 4, proposals are evaluated in parallel by the NCN and the NSFC, and grants are awarded only to projects recommended for funding by both agencies until the budget of the call is exhausted.

The results of the SONATINA call will be announced by September 2025 and for SHENG by the end of November 2025 at the latest.

New NCN panel list

The winter round of NCN call announcements is also accompanied by a modified list of panels under which proposals will be submitted and evaluated, the first such sweeping change in years. The changes were approved by the NCN Council in September, following many months of debates and consultations with the Polish research community. They are meant to align the NCN panel list more closely with that in use at the European Research Council and with the actual realities of research in our country. More information.

We present a preliminary timeline for calls operated by the National Science Centre in the year 2025.

The call timeline does not include multilateral calls launched by the international networks of research funding agencies, including the NCN, which are announced and pre-announced on the NCN website all year round according to the decisions of the participating agencies.

2025 call timeline

Download the NCN 2025 call timeline

Minister of Science Dariusz Wieczorek has appointed Dr hab. Marta Bucholc to the NCN Council. The Council is now restored to a full 24 members.

Dr hab. Marta Bucholc is a professor at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Warsaw and Chercheuse Associée at Centre de recherche en science politique (CReSPo) at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels. Her interests center on the sociology of law, historical sociology, history of sociology and social theory. Specifically, she specialises in classical German sociology and the figurational theory of Norbert Elias, working to apply the figurational paradigm to the sociological study of legal cultures.

Dr hab. Marta Bucholc is a PI under an ERC Consolidator project, as well as a winner of three NCN calls (currently heading a SONATA BIS project). She also leads a Polish research team in a project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. She worked as a research professor at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Recht als Kultur” at the University of Bonn, in addition to having been a visiting professor at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels and the University of Graz, a visiting bye-fellow at Selwyn College at Cambridge University, a fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and Imre Kertesz Kolleg in Jena, and a project fellow at the University of Munich.

Dr hab. Marta Bucholc has been appointed to serve on the NCN Council until 14 December 2026. She will take the place of Dr hab. Bogusław Przywora, who stepped down in May 2024.

In December this year, half of the current NCN Council Members will conclude their terms. New members, selected from among the candidates recommended by the Identification Team, will be officially appointed by the Minister of Science later this month. The official ceremony is planned to take place before Christmas.

1. The budget of the Polish part of the project in the joint proposal should be calculated according to the following exchange rates:

• in joint proposals, for which NCN proposals are processed in and submitted via the OSF submission system by 31 December 2024: 1 EUR = 4.5940 PLN;
• in joint proposals, for which NCN proposals are processed in and submitted via the OSF submission system from 1 January 2025: 1 EUR = 4,2717 PLN.

2. NCN proposals processed in the OSF submission system in 2024, with the exchange rate of 1 EUR = 4.5940 PLN, must be completed in and submitted via the OSF submission system by 31 December 2024 at 23:59:59. Otherwise, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case the Polish research team must prepare a new proposal, with the exchange rate 1 EUR = 4,2717 PLN, and complete it in the OSF submission system. If a joint proposal has already been submitted to the lead agency, with the budget of the Polish part of the project calculated according to another exchange rate, the NCN proposal will be inconsistent with the joint proposal and as a consequence the proposal may be rejected on the grounds that it does not meet the eligibility criteria.
3. As of 1 January 2025, the updated Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral cooperation pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure shall apply.
4. Please consult the updated call documents, including the Guidelines for Polish research teams.

Free-living honeybee colonies in Europe, solar farms, urban transformation labs, marginal saltlands and healing forests will be at the centre of interest for five Polish research teams that have just won funding under BiodivNBS, a call for proposals organised by the BIODIVERSA+ European Biodiversity Partnership. Their total budget is more than PLN 5.8 million.

In the third call announced by the BIODIVERSA+ partnership thus far, researchers working at Polish research centres could apply for grants to finance international and interdisciplinary research projects in biodiversity protection, including both basic and applied research. Specifically, the subject of the BiodivNBS call was “Nature-Based Solutions for biodiversity, human well-being and transformative change”. Nature-Based Solutions are defined as actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified ecosystems, which address social, economic and environmental challenges effectively and adaptively, while simultaneously providing human well-being, ecosystem services and biodiversity benefits.

Stage 1 of BiodivNBS attracted 183 pre-proposals; at stage 2, experts evaluated 108 full proposals. Funding was awarded to 34 projects with a total budget of more than EUR 40 million.

Successful projects that include Polish research teams:

1. FREE-B: Studying FREE-living honey Bee colonies in Europe: nature-based solutions to safeguard diversity, ensure resilience, and promote transformative change in beekeeping. Polish PI: Dr hab. Andrzej Oleksa, University of Bydgoszcz. Awarded grant: PLN 851,405.
2. Solar farms: an opportunity to recover biodiversity in farmlands. Polish PI: Dr Marcin Tobółka, Poznań University of Life Sciences. Awarded grant: PLN 520,940.
3. Enhancing Urban Sustainability for Environmental Quality and Human Well-being through Nature-Based Solutions Transformation Labs. Polish PI: Dr hab. Barbara Natalia Sowińska-Świerkosz, University of Life Sciences in Lublin. Awarded grant: PLN 1,200,480.
4. Salty symphonies: bringing back biodiversity in marginal saltlands. Polish PI: Prof. Dr hab. Katarzyna Hrynkiewicz, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Awarded grant: PLN 1,434,720.
5. Planetary Health by Healing Forests as Nature Based Solution. Polish PI: Dr Paweł Mateusz Sowa, Medical University of Białystok. Awarded grant: PLN 1,769,248.

About BiodivNBS

BiodivNBS was launched in September 2023 and was open to international consortia composed of at least three research teams from at least three participating countries. The PI of the Polish team had to hold at least a PhD degree. The call was divided into two stages. At stage 1, Polish teams, in tandem with their international partners, had to submit joint pre-proposals, which were evaluated by an international team of experts. The best teams were then invited to submit full proposals for evaluation by the same experts at stage 2.

The BiodivNBS call was organised by 41 research-funding agencies and organisations from 34 countries. The Polish teams will be co-funded by the National Science Centre and the European Commission. Projects could be planned over 3 months, with no caps on the budget of any single project.