Achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is now less than ten years away. All countries need to support the sustainable transformation, and international collaboration must be strengthened since global development and sustainable development are interconnected. There is a greater need to fund research that integrates different perspectives and involves researchers from different countries, including low-income and lower-middle income countries, and addresses the challenges of achieving the SDGs.

This call for proposals is being funded within the framework of Intsam, a collaboration among the Swedish Energy Agency, Formas, Forte, the Swedish Research Council and Vinnova, and has been developed together with Sida. The focus of the call is network projects within the areas of responsibility of all participating funders. The projects should run for one year, and you can apply for a maximum of SEK 200,000 per project.

Purpose and focus

The call aims to create better conditions for international research collaboration that can eventually help to achieve the SDGs. More specifically, the call aims to give Swedish researchers the opportunity to establish and develop networks together with researchers outside Europe to formulate new common project ideas.

The planned collaboration should be jointly developed by all network partners, focus on mutually identified needs and based on equal collaboration. The funding is intended to be used for networking activities only, not research and innovation projects. The goal is for researchers in these networks to be able to apply for grants for joint research and innovation projects in national and international calls.

Collaboration must take place with researchers in countries outside Europe, but the call has no other geographical requirements. Collaborative initiatives can be initiated, for example, with countries that have been previous beneficiaries of aid and for which collaboration must build new forms of sustainable cooperation, or with low- and lower-middle-income countries that face the greatest challenges in implementing the agenda.

The focus of the call is network projects within the areas of responsibility of all participating funders. The projects should run for one year, and you can apply for a maximum of SEK 200,000 per project. Some of the funds may be used to finance expenses for parties outside Sweden.

Read more and apply at Formas.se