In response to Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine, the National Science Centre pledges its solidarity to Ukraine and its people. We would like to address our support to our grant winners, experts participating in the evaluation procedure and research partners.
We hope to see Ukraine safe again and our colleagues to continue their work for the benefit of research and our societies.
At least 29 national and regional funding organisations from 22 countries have preliminarily committed to participate with an indicative total call budget of at least 25 Million €.
The Call 2022 will provide additional support to the thematic priorities of previous M-ERA.NET calls, addressing materials research and innovation including materials for energy generating and storing elements in line with the European Green Deal and supporting the Sustainable Development Goals.
M-ERA.NET will develop responsible research and innovation processes to systematically address socio-ecological, ethical and political dimensions of material research, development and use.Details on topics, participating countries/regions and call procedures will be published soon.
More information can be found at the programme website.
Contact:
Please note that under the Weave-UNISONO call, if a joint proposal is submitted to ARRS as the lead agency by 28 February 2022, an NCN proposal must be submitted electronically via the ZSUN/OSF submission system as soon as possible following the submission of the joint proposal to the ARRS, by 7 March 2022 at the latest.
PLEASE NOTE: once the work on the NCN proposal has started in the ZSUN/OSF submission system, the Polish research team has 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and submit it to the NCN. After that, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case a Polish research team that has not sent its proposal to the NCN must prepare a new proposal and complete it in the ZSUN/OSF submission system.
Five projects involving Polish research teams were awarded grants in an international Call on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on social life organised by the Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (T-AP)
The Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities operates as a self-funded cooperation network for humanities and social science research funders from Europe and the Americas.
Announced in July 2021, the call entitled Recovery, Renewal and Resilience in a Post-Pandemic World (RRR Call 2021) is co-funded by 16 agencies from 12 countries from both sides of the Atlantic. Research proposals submitted in this Call addressed the following challenges:
The Call attracted huge interest from the research community. 19 out of a total of 315 international projects submitted under the call were awarded funding. These included 5 Polish projects, which received more than 2.85 million zlotys from the NCN.
The successful projects:
Polish team led by Dr. hab. Beata Klimkiewicz from the Jagiellonian University, in cooperation with partners from Brazil, the UK and the USA, will carry out a research project on political communication and public health. The researchers will conduct the first comprehensive, comparative study of health crisis communication in the context of populist politics.
Historically, crises – both natural and man-made – have exacerbated problems, but have also been one of the main drivers of mobilisation and societal transformation. Together with his Polish team, Dr. Mateusz Karolak from the University of Wrocław will examine the phenomena of social resilience and resistance in a post-pandemic world. The research will be carried out in cooperation with partners from Brazil, Croatia, Finland, Canada, Colombia, Germany, the UK and the USA.
The research of the Polish team led by Dr. Piotr Modzelewski from the University of Warsaw, will focus on two areas: reducing inequalities and vulnerabilities and fostering democratic governance and political participation. The research project will involve partners from Canada, the UK and the USA.
Polish researchers led by of Dr. hab. Sławomir Mandes from the University of Warsaw will examine how various religions contribute to building more resilient, inclusive and sustainable societies, and study the changing role of majority and minority religions in the “global north”, i.e. Canada, Germany, Ireland/Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) and Poland, in the context of a growing interest in spirituality observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project will be carried out in cooperation with partners from Canada, Germany and the UK.
Polish team led by Prof. Krystyna Slany from the Jagiellonian University, in cooperation with partners from Brazil, Germany and the UK, aims to broaden our knowledge on the phenomenon of marginalisation experienced by female migrants and their coping strategies. Researchers will explore how migrant women have faced those challenges and produced movements of resistance and renewal. The project is transnational, comparative and cross-sectional.
With a month to go until the POLONEZ BIS call 2 launches, you can read the updated “Guide for applicants” and register in the programme’s Partner Search Tool.
How to prepare and submit a proposal for the POLONEZ BIS 2 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Poland? The updated “POLONEZ BIS 2 Guide for applicants” will help you through the application and evaluation processes and explain the terms and conditions of the programme.
Thanks to the feedback provided by the applicants from the first POLONEZ BIS call the Guide was updated with new elements, such as: examples in eligibility and budget sections, proposal checklist and links to particular sections of the Resolution on the programme’s terms and regulations.
Scientists and institutions interested in the programme and searching for relevant research partners are welcome to use a dedicated POLONEZ BIS Partner Search Tool. Whether you are a POLONEZ BIS candidate, a prospective host institution or an organisation offering a short-term secondment, just create a profile and answer a few questions. Then, with one click, you can publish your expression of interest in the open part of the database.
The POLONEZ BIS call 2 opens on 15 March 2022 and closes on 15 June 2022.
To keep updated, visit the official website of the programme, subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us in social media.
Principal Investigator
:
Dr hab. Artur Obłuski
Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw
Panel: HS3
Funding scheme
: SONATA 7
announced on
announced on 17 March 2014
I would like to start off by describing the impact of the project on my research career, which has not taken a very typical path. I was never hired by an university after my MA defence, not even after my PhD; I conducted research without a formal affiliation with any academic institution. Getting a university position as part of the grant allowed me to fully devote myself to my studies and served as an incredibly important catalyst for my academic career. After winning the NCN call, I went on to secure more grants, first from the Qatar Museum Authorities, and finally, the European Research Council (ERC). This shows that creating funding opportunities for people from outside the university system contributes to increasing the competitive edge of research and improves its quality. People who cannot, for different reasons, carry out their research at an university, do not need to fall through the cracks and look for jobs outside the field of research, but can compete with colleagues who were more fortunate at the beginning of their careers.
Churches in Ghazali. Photo by Miron Bogacki
Another important advantage of the Polish granting system is its similarity to that employed by the ERC. This allows researchers to gain considerable experience in preparing projects intended for the most prestigious European funding schemes. For me personally, taking part in the NCN call served as a stepping stone to an ERC Starting Grant and my subsequent habilitation. This personal story demonstrates that the introduction of an open granting system and the foundation of the NCN were among the most important, positive changes in 21st-century Polish research. There is a fly in this ointment as well, however. The system works too well – in many fields, NCN grants almost completely satisfy the demand for research projects. This is one of the reasons why so few Polish researchers apply for ERC grants.
My project was devoted to the role of religious institutions in ancient Nubia. Polish scholars, such as Professor Ewa Wipszycka, have long been in the vanguard of research into monasticism in the Nile Valley. We have excavated and participated in archaeological digs in various monasteries, both in Egypt and Nubia. However, while the Polish school published excellent monographs on monasticism in Egypt, which have since made it into the canon of the field, there was a lack of similar sources on Nubia. My archaeological research at the Ghazali monastery was designed to fill this gap and enrich the synthesis with a comparative perspective. I wrote the first comprehensive study of Nubian monasticism, entitled “Monasteries and Monks of Nubia”, to complement Professor Wipszycka’s “The Second Gift of The Nile, Monks and Monasteries in Late Antique Egypt”. Thanks to this monograph and the articles I published in the renowned Monastic Institute of the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm in Rome, as well as in journals such as the “Journal of Archaeological Science”, “Archaeometry”, or the “The Encyclopedia of Ancient History: Asia and Africa”, and the Routledge series, information about the phenomenon can now be included in further syntheses and bring the discipline, until now dominated by Polish researchers, into the international arena.
Churches in Ghazali. Photo by Miron Bogacki
My research shows that all monastic forms, from individual asceticism to coenobitism, were present in Nubia. Archaeological sources also suggest that the relationship between the monastic movement and the elites of Makuria was extremely strong. Monks were employed in royal administration and it is mainly from their ranks that bishops were usually recruited; there are also reports of kings who abdicated to take up an ascetic life. Nubian monasticism, not unlike Christendom at large, was inspired by Egypt, but Nubians also looked for new ideas further up north, in Palestine, Syria and Constantinople. Monasteries played an important role as centres of education and royal administration offices. They also had a major economic function as one of the greatest institutional consumers at the local level. Monks engaged in charitable work and medicine, and contributed to the growth of civilization, e.g. by promoting the knowledge of iron manufacturing.
The monograph “Monasteries and Monks of Nubia” was published in open access and has been downloaded by nearly 3000 people thus far. This is yet another success of the granting system to which the NCN contributes.
Project title: Nubian Monasticism. The role of religious institutions in the peripheries of the Byzantine world
Archaeologist, expert in Nubiology, particularly interested in Nubian monasticism and social and religious transformations in Northeast Africa and the Near East. He has headed an archaeological expedition to Old Dongola and Ghazali in Sudan. He is the first Polish archaeologist to receive a grant from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant), the President of the International Society for Nubian Studies and Head of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw. He promotes the idea of socially responsible archaeology and the engagement of local communities in cultural heritage management.
The National Science Centre has just published the findings of its survey on men and women in science. “The survey clearly shows that what matters for research quality is a friendly environment and a high culture of work, and that we need a campaign that would foster such a culture in the broader research community”, says Professor Teresa Zielińska, Chair of the Committee of Research Activity Analysis at the NCN Council, one of the masterminds of the survey.
The survey was conducted between 19 July and 30 September 2021. The questionnaire, drawn up in two different versions, one for men, one for women, was completed by nearly 6,000 respondents: more than 3,700 female and nearly 2,100 male researchers. The survey was open to researchers at any level from all research centres, regardless of whether they have ever applied for an NCN grant.
The questionnaire was divided into five sections. Respondents were asked about their experience applying for NCN grants, any difficulties they may have faced in accessing other domestic and international funds, their experiences in their workplace, and the challenges of work and family balance. The survey also featured questions on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their career and research performance.
The results of the survey were analysed by the NCN’s Analysis and Evaluation Team and the Committee of Research Activity Analysis of the NCN Council.
(Dis)belief in success The survey indicates that men and women apply for research funding for very similar reasons. The dominant factors include a desire to develop their research, continue projects and advance in their careers.
However, women are much more likely to doubt their chances of success in securing research funds. Critical of their own research record and doubtful of their odds of success, they frequently decide not to respond to domestic and international calls at all. Women are also more likely to say that they feel their research institution has failed to support them in the application process, as well as report not having adequate information about the calls.
Both men and women express equal interest in taking on the role of a principal investigator under a research project. However, men are more likely than women to opt for the role of contractor in order to avoid the administrative burdens associated with the former status.
“Faced with the challenges of applying for grants, researchers expect support from their colleagues and superiors. However, the professional environment sometimes fails to establish a positive relationship with them, and perhaps even ignores this aspect”, Professor Zielińska comments.
According to the survey, women’s careers are also hindered by an unequal division of responsibilities within the family. Female respondents are more likely to list family obligations as a factor limiting their research funding applications. More frequently than men, they say they struggle to strike a work/family balance and report feelings of remorse for neglecting their families.
Women are also more likely to feel the need to get support in relation to their family situation or childcare from their closest academic environment and research facility. Likewise, a greater proportion of women than men believe that their parental leave had an adverse impact on their career, limiting their research activity and mobility.
“The NCN has long prioritized the need to ensure equal access to research funds for men and women”, says Professor Zbigniew Błocki, the NCN Director. Błocki points out that several years ago, the NCN already introduced targeted solutions to help female researchers reconcile their work and family life. “We extended the period during which young mothers can apply for post-docs and young researchers’ grants after their PhD defence by 1.5 years per child; we also modified the time limits in our research record assessment process. However, clearly, there is much more to be done in this respect, both at the NCN and at other institutions”, he clarifies.
According to the survey, more women than men have experienced gender discrimination and gender inequality in their research facility and academic environment. Women are more likely to experience unequal division of professional responsibilities and tend to be paid less than men at a similar career level and in a similar job. They also feel more pressure to take on new responsibilities to prove their worth. Female respondents often report having faced hurdles to promotion, mobbing, condescension or discrimination against those who were planning or already had children.
It must be noted, however, that both men and women were identified as the people responsible for these discriminatory and exclusionary practices.
In contrast, men who reported gender inequality in the academic environment, said it involved, e.g., the implementation of special programmes targeted exclusively at women, gender parity measures adopted at some centres and what they considered as women’s unjustified overrepresentation in executive positions.
“I am afraid that even though the solutions and regulations we introduce to level the playing field for both genders in science seem to enjoy widespread acceptance, outward declarations are not always matched by an inner conviction”, says Professor Zielińska. The survey, she adds, suggests that research centres need to introduce targeted policies to tackle this problem and promote their measures among researchers.
The NCN Director confessed that the part of the survey that made a particular impression on him personally was the one dealing with the experiences of discrimination against women. “I think this should be required reading for anyone working in research. Polish research centres should have a zero tolerance policy for situations of the kind described in the survey”, he comments.
Both men and women report that the pandemic has had both pros and cons for their research career. The disadvantages include the need to reorganise their work, travel restrictions and limited access to labs. Men are also more likely than women to mention reduced contact with their peers. Women, on the other hand, tend to report the negative impact on their careers of the increased burden of family responsibilities, including childcare in the period when nurseries and preschools closed down. Interestingly, however, it turns out that women have devoted more time to research work during the pandemic than before. Online classes, teleconferences and flexible working hours have helped them boost their research efficiency as long as they had access to adequate childcare.
The survey involved a non-random (purposive) sample and used the CAWI (Computer-Assisted Web Interview) methodology; the questionnaire was available online. The women’s form was most commonly completed by researchers from the field of art, humanities, and social sciences, while physical sciences and engineering were the most common fields in the male group. For both genders, PhD holders accounted for the largest proportion of respondents. The majority work in cities with a population of more than 500,000.
For the NCN, the report will serve as a point of departure for designing further measures to level the playing field for men and women in science. “We will be monitoring the situation and continuing our commitment to international gender equality initiatives. We need to optimise our use of social capital in the development of our country, in order to make sure that, irrespective of social and cultural determinants, everyone will have the same opportunities to deploy their talents and passions in scientific research”, the director adds.
“You can be a grant winner no matter if you live in the countryside or in the mountains or work in a small organisation,” says Prof. Robert Mysłajek, Vice-President of the Association for Nature WOLF with its office in Godziszki, Silesian (śląskie) Voivodeship. Between 2014 and 2017, Prof. Robert Mysłajek performed a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the NCN under the FUGA call at the University of Warsaw where he was later employed. “I have never worked at a research institution before although my work there was the same as at the Association,” he says adding that the Head of the Association who has worked at non-governmental institutions for over two decades is yet another NCN grant winner which helped her to get employment at a university.
“Everyone has the same funding opportunity. Grants are awarded for the best projects,” says Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director. The success of a proposal depends on its quality and researcher’s academic and research track record.
Between 2011 and 2021, the largest number of grants went to researchers from the largest academic centres that employ the largest number of researchers and produce the largest number of proposals. According to the study drafted by the NCN’s Evaluation Team, the largest number of grants went to researchers from the following Voivodeships: Mazowieckie (32.3%), Małopolskie (18.5%.), Wielkopolskie (11.2%), Dolnośląskie (8.8%) and Łódzkie (5.6%). In seven Voivodeships, the total funding awarded per number of PhD holders was over 100 thousand (Mazowieckie, Małopolskie, Wielkopolskie, Dolnośląskie, Pomorskie, Łódzkie and Warmińsko-Mazurskie). The lowest number of grants went to Lubuskie, Świętokrzyskie and Opolskie Voivodships.
In Mazowsze, public, non-public and church-owned universities alone employ over 14,500 researchers who are PhD holders, in Małopolska almost 11,000. These figures do not even include employees of the Polish Academy of Sciences and other research institutions. Higher education institutions in the Świętokrzyskie and Opolskie Voivideships employ approx. 200 people, whilst the smallest academic centre (Lubuskie Voivodeship), merely 1,000 people.
Over the last decade, more than 33,000 proposals have been submitted to the NCN by researchers from Mazowsze, almost 20,000 from Małopolska, over 13,000 from Wielkopolska and over 10,000 from Dolny Śląsk. At the same time, around 1,000 proposals came from the Świętokrzyskie and Opolskie Voivodeships and only 600 from the Lubuskie Voivodeship.
“In order to receive a grant, a researcher must prepare a good and well-grounded research project,” says Dr Magdalena Kolańska-Stronka from the University of Zielona Góra who received funding a few years ago under the PRELUDIUM call. She consulted her project with other researchers, including foreign researchers. “It takes time to prepare a proposal but allows you to plan your work for the nearest future well. Funding allows you to carry out your research more efficiently, as well as to publish and present your research results at international conferences. In my case, it also helped me to get a PhD,” she adds.
According to Prof. Błocki, science in Poland is too decentralised and although the NCN cannot affect the reason for that state of affairs pertains, it strives to equalise the research potential of various research institutions. The NCN promotes research mobility, introduces quotas on the number of grants, organises training courses for applicants and NCN Days at smaller research institutions.
“Our regulations may foster decentralisation of science. Our proposal evaluation criteria do not include evaluation of a research institution,” says Prof. Błocki who believes that academic and research centres should actively attract researchers and the NCN “gives them measures to do so”. “Universities should attract researchers who are our grant winners, especially that at the beginning it is entirely cost-free ,” he says.
Maciej Juzaszek was conferred a PhD degree at the Jagiellonian University and later worked at one of the Warsaw universities. “I conducted preliminary research on how to educate doctoral law students. I co-prepared two proposals to the NCN but was both times unsuccessful, so I followed experts’ advice and modified my research idea,” he says. His next proposal was recommended for funding last autumn under the OPUS call within the framework of the Centre for Legal Education and Social Theory (CLEST) of the University of Wrocław. “If I had not been awarded that grant, I would not have had the opportunity to work at the CLEST, and I might have had to look for employment elsewhere, outside academia," he adds.
Grants can be used to fund the employment of principal investigators and salaries for the team members (post-docs), research funded by the grants strengthens scientific communities and counts towards evaluation. “A sports analogy can be used here. Can a football club achieve success relying only on its own football academy? It almost never happens,” says Prof. Błocki
We have recently presented information on how the NCN supports early-stage researchers
JPI Urban Europe network invites all interested applicants to participate in information webinars dedicated to the ERA-NET Cofund Urban Accessibility and Connectivity Sino-European Joint Call.
Webinars’ agenda and all related details, including the registration form, are available on the website of the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
The call will be launched in mid-February 2022 in cooperation of JPI Urban Europe network and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and will address two research topics: Sustainable Urban Logistics in the Age of Digitisation and Strengthening Climate-neutral Mobility.
Eligibility criteria and guidelines for applicants will be published in the official call announcement. Guidelines for Polish researchers applying for NCN funding in this call will be published on the National Science Centre website along with the call announcement.
Principal Investigator
:
Dr hab. Nuria Selva
Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences
Panel: NZ8
Funding scheme
: BiodivERsA
announced on
14 May 2015
The movement of animals across landscapes is crucial for many ecological processes, from individual survival to the persistence of populations. The expansion of human infrastructure, such as roads and urban settlements, creates barriers to animal movement and alters both the physical structure of the landscape and the way animals move. In this project, we have focused on brown bears in order to investigate the functional connectivity of European landscapes, i.e. the degree to which landscapes in Europe facilitate or impede the movement of individual bears and associated genes.
Fieldwork. Checking bilberry germination in labelled bear droppings. Photo by Christine Sonvilla
In humanised landscapes, long-distance movement is particularly important for maintaining gene flow between isolated populations but, at the same time, is challenging for the animals. In brown bears, usually young males are taking long trips from their place of birth to new sites in order to find a partner and reproduce. We reported the longest dispersal distance for a brown bear in central Europe (360 km straight distance), starting in the Tatra Mountains in Poland up to the Gorgany Mountains in Ukraine, thus potentially connecting the western and eastern Carpathian
population segments. During his dispersal, this bear kept away from built-up areas and had to make 21 road crossings per month on average. He was the only tracked bear crossing highways successfully, with the help of wildlife passages. He moved through four countries and crossed a border once per week, each time falling under different legislation. We reviewed 29 cases of long-distance dispersal reported for large carnivores in Europe and found that 96% were transboundary. Most cases of long-distance dispersal ended with the animal’s death before it could reproduce and, thus, could not support population connectivity. Eighty-two per cent of the confirmed deaths
were human-caused; almost half of them were legal killings. Our study emphasised the high conservation value of long-distance dispersers in large carnivore populations, as well as the urgent need to consider them as mobile conservation targets and to include wide-ranging movements in conservation policies.
Bear family (femable with cubs) eating bilberries in the Tatra National Park. Photo by Adam Wajrak
A fundamental ecological process that also relies on animal movement is seed dispersal. Worldwide, bears dispersed seeds from over hundred fleshy-fruited plant species. Fleshy fruits represented on average 24% of the food items consumed by bears across their distribution range. For fleshy fruits, it was good to be eaten by bears, as seeds germinated better after passing through bears’ gut than when embedded within the whole fruit, and bears did not damage most seeds while eating them. We found that brown bears dispersed the vast majority of bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) seeds in the Tatra Mountains. Together with two species of thrush and red foxes, they were the most efficient bilberry dispersers. We marked and monitored the fate of bear scats and detected bilberry germination in all of them. On average, we counted 154 bilberry seedlings/m2 in bear scat locations. This number doubled at scats in bear beds, suggesting that bear resting behaviour, which involves digging the soil, clearly enhanced the recruitment of bilberry.
Fleshy fruits, in particular the bilberry – detected in 56% and 42% of the bear scats, respectively – play a pivotal role in the feeding ecology of Tatra brown bears. In total, we identified 173 different food items in the diet of brown bears in Tatra, most of them of natural origin. Despite the high levels of human pressure in the region, bears still provide important seed dispersal services. We showed that brown bears are legitimate seed dispersers and highlight that the decline of brown bears may compromise seed dispersal services and plant regeneration processes, as bears are among the few megafauna species still dispersing large amounts of seeds over long distances in temperate and boreal regions.
Project title: BearConnect. Functional connectivity and ecological sustainability of European ecological networks- a case study with the brown bear
Professor at the Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences. Animal ecologist and conservation biologist with a focus on mammals and large carnivores in particular. She has led brown bear research at the Institute of Nature Conservation, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) since 2007 and is currently the head of the Integrative and Applied Ecology Research Group. She has co-authored more than 100 scientific publications and participated in over 20 projects. In 2018, she received the scientific award of the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
