Funding – Diligentia Stiftung

The Diligentia Foundation for Empirical Research

The Diligentia Foundation for Empirical Research was founded in 2015 to promote the social sciences, in particular economics and related disciplines. In continuation of, and in accordance with, its founder’s intention, the foundation promotes empirical research on various issues.

Call for Project Proposals

What Is Funded?

Funding will be provided for empirical research, whether it is problem-oriented and theory-building or else engages in theory and hypothesis testing. The results of this research should be testable, and therefore refutable, in a real-world setting. Funding is also provided for the development of the methods required for this research.

The focus of the funded projects shall be on empirical and experimental economics and social sciences. The projects should demonstrate innovative references of theory and practice, experience and science, which extend or supplement our conventional understanding of empiricism.

Funding of up to € 50,000 is available for research projects. Requested costs must be directly related to data collection and analysis. Examples include, but are not restricted to: payments needed for conducting experiments or surveys; access to databases; acquisition of software; payments to research assistants, as long as these account for a reasonably small part of the total requested amount. Please note that funding cannot cover overheads or dissemination activities, such as travel or conference costs and the organization of events.

The maximum funding period is three years, with the possibility of one cost neutral extension.

Who May Apply?

Applicants can be one or more natural persons with a doctorate, who work in a state-recognized scientific institution in Austria, Germany, or Switzerland. Please note that we cannot accept more than one project proposal per year by the same person. This means that an applicant may not be involved in any other project application.

Applications by junior faculty and female researchers are particularly welcome.

After the final decision on the funded projects has been reached we will negotiate with the apllicant the mutual rights and obligations in a legal contract. We recommend that all applicants check prior to submitting an application whether they are authorized to receive and administer the funding or whether the institution at which they work prohibits this. In these cases, we suggest that the applicant's institution join the grant agreement with the understanding that it will only administer the grant funds for the applicant for that specific project. The scientific institution itself cannot be the grant recipient/addressee of the project funding.

How Can One Apply?

Applicants should submit a short application by 31.01.2024, which should include the following:

Title of the research project and contact details of the applicant(s)
Project description, consisting of:
- Relevance of the topic for empirical research
- Objective of the project
- Research design
Brief CV of the applicant(s) (no longer than two pages per CV)
Information on the requested funding (breakdown of costs) and on other sources of funding, if applicable
Time frame of project

This short application should be submitted using the relevant form (see application forms), by by email to projekte@stiftung-diligentia.org.

The short applications are first evaluated by the foundation during an initial selection process. From 28.02.2024, those applicants whose proposals have been deemed high-priority in the first selection stage will be invited to submit a full proposal. This full proposal should provide a detailed description of the project and consider the following points in detail: the research topic and significance of the research question; the current state and level of knowledge and the contribution of the project to the field; empirical methods and hypotheses; planned data analyses. The maximum size of the full proposal may not exceed 12 pages, and the deadline for submission is 30.04.2024. Please include the exact date of submission on the front page.

Applications may only be submitted in electronic form and must be in English.

How Is the Selection Process Carried Out?

The central decision criterion for financial support is the empirical value of the research work, in accordance with the purpose of the foundation.

Full applications will be independently evaluated, and it is planned to communicate the final decisions on the funded projects in July 2024.

Contact

Board of the Diligentia Foundation for Empirical Research
Postal Address:
Agrippastraße 8
50676 Köln/Cologne
projekte@stiftung-diligentia.org
www.stiftung-diligentia.org

Members of the Board

The members of the board can be found here.

Call Diligentia Prize for Empirical Research

What Is the Prize Awarded for?

Each year, the Diligentia Foundation honors outstanding empirical and experimental research that has produced innovative results for socially relevant issues.

The prize is awarded for scientific publications by individual authors or teams of authors in the form of articles in recognized international journals.

The prize is worth € 5.000, a sum that shall be evenly distributed among all authors in the case of teams of authors.

For the 2024 prize we will consider articles published in print between May 2023 and April 2024.

Who May Apply?

Applicants can be natural persons with a doctorate, who work in a state-recognized European scientific institution.