Research Centre on Geopolitics

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have authorised the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.

If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner submits the application on behalf of all the partners.

Requirements relating to project managers

The project manager named in the application must be the centre director.

• You must have an approved doctorate or achieved professor/associate professor qualifications before the date of the application submission deadline. For the purposes of this call, you are also qualified if you hold or have held a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) in the institute sector.
• You must have documented qualifications and/or experience of managing large-scale projects.
• It is a requirement that the centre director can communicate in Norwegian.
• You must be employed by the Project Owner.

Requirements relating to partners

The document Research Centre – Research Institution-based Strategic Project, Requirements and Guidelines (in Norwegian) describes the centre’s organisation and responsibilities.

Approved Norwegian research organisations and equivalent foreign organisations are eligible to participate as partners in the project and receive funding. All partners must actively contribute to planning, following up and disseminating the results generated by the centre’s research activities and ensure that the new knowledge is taken into use.

Relevant public sector actors can also be included as the centre’s partners, but please note that only approved research organisations can receive funding from the Research Council.

The grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of the Project Owner and all partners.

We can provide NOK 45 million in funding under this call, distributed over a six-year period. Some of these funds – NOK 15 million – come from the development cooperation budget.

The funding has been allocated to the Research Council over the development cooperation budget, and grant applications must therefore satisfy the requirements regarding the use of Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding. To meet these requirements, the grant application must seek to advance economic development or welfare in countries on the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) List of ODA Recipients.

The Research Council will not award funding that constitutes state aid under this call.

You may be granted funding for the following costs:

• Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations participating in the centre. For doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum three person-years. For post-doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum four person-years. To ensure that the centre will have a lasting effect in relation to Norwegian research capacity and expertise, the research organisations’ plans may include new permanent researcher positions. Such researcher positions, which must contribute directly to the centre’s activities, can be funded through the centre’s grant for a period of up to three years.
• Equipment that is necessary to carry out the project. This includes lease and depreciation costs for scientific equipment, access to national or international research infrastructure and minor new procurements and upgrading of existing equipment.
• Other operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out the centre’s R&D efforts. Procurements from subcontractors that exceed NOK 100,000 must be specified.

Do not use the cost category ‘Procurement of R&D services’ in the application form.

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website.

Stays abroad for doctoral and post-doctoral fellows must be covered within the framework of the funding provided for the centre. The centre is thereby not included in the Research Council's special scheme for funding for research stays abroad for doctoral and post-doctoral fellows.

Scope of funding

We can provide funding of NOK 45 million for the centre. There are no requirements for own financing. The payments will follow the allocations from the Ministry, with a maximum annual limit of NOK 7.5 million.

Conditions for funding

Projects must commence between 1 July 2023 and 1 October 2023, and you must apply for funding from the Research Council for 2023–2029. The latest permitted completion date for the project is 31 December 2029.

The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocations and disbursement of funding for the first year and any pledges and payments for subsequent years are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects, available in their entirety on the information page What the contract involves.

If your project is granted funding, the following must be in place before you sign a contract with us:

• From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website. The requirement does not apply to the business sector, special interest organisations or the non-governmental sector.
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific publications; see Plan S – open access to publications.
• The Project Owner of projects that process data must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application. You can find more information here about Requirements for a data management plan in projects that manage data. The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. This must be specified in the data management plan for the project.

Funding will be disbursed in arrears, and only actual expenses entered in the institution’s accounts will be covered. All reporting takes place electronically.

The funding is paid automatically three times a year, with a maximum of NOK 7.5 million in total per year.

You may revise and resubmit your application form multiple times up to the submission deadline for applications. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the grant application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
• Use the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.

Mandatory attachments

• a project description (maximum 20 pages)
• the CV of the project manager (centre director)
• the CVs of other key members of the project team

Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.

Optional attachments

• Proposals for up to three referees who are considered qualified to assess the application.

All attachments must be submitted together with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the deadline for applications unless we have requested further information.

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments you upload, so please make sure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

We assess the applications in light of the purpose of the application type and pursuant to the following criteria:

All applications will be considered by international referees. After the panel assessment, the applications will be assessed in relation to the criterion “Relevance to the call for proposals”. The administration will then write a recommendation to the granting authority. The granting authority will make the final decision regarding the approval or rejection of grant applications.

See also: How we process applications.

We expect to announce which applications have been awarded funding in May 2023.