18 September 2019 at 3:00 pm CEST: "How to write successful research grant applications?" by Jarna Heinonen

Our host institutions expect us to raise research finance for ourselves, our research groups and younger scholars from national and international sources. Currently it seems rather ‘a norm’ that successful and prominent researchers do not only perform well in terms of interesting and top quality research and publishing output but also in terms of attracting external funding to be able to conduct such research.

This webinar opens up one particular case of writing a successful grant application to Horizon 2020 WORK Programme submitted in March 2018.The research project DISCE (Developing Inclusive & Sustainable Creative Economies) started in January 2019 and will last until the end of 2021. DISCE is lead by University of Turku (UTU), School of Economics, Finland and the consortium consists of three other research partners (King’s College London, UK; Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italy, and Stockholm School of Economics Riga, Latvia) as well as two stakeholder partners communication office CUMEDIAE from Brussels, Belgium and a Europe-based network of cultural centres, Trans Europe Halles, Sweden.

The webinar will not focus on this interesting DISCE research project (in EU jargon it is officially called RIA, research and innovative action) as such but on the phases and decisions made before starting the DISCE project in 2019.

The webinar will address:

• motivation of investing time in writing H2020 application
• UTU team – who took initiative and were involved
• why the particular call was selected
• how the call was addressed, i.e. how to understand the Commission’s requests/needs
• how the consortium was formed, i.e. how we found suitable partners
• how the proposal writing was organised within the consortium – the ways of engaging the partners
• what kind of support was received from the host institutions and from others
• how much time and effort needed to be invested in

The webinar topic will be presented by Jarna Heinonen who is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Turku School of Economics, University of Turku and the Principal Investigator of DISCE research project.

“I will do my best to summarise the lessons learnt – what was easy and feasible and what was challenging – in a way I perceive them and how we tackled them. Finally, I will briefly address the process of Grant Agreement Preparation, to which we were invited in August 2018 and finalised in November, 2018.

I do not claim that the way we wrote this particular application was perfect although we managed to win the grant. The webinar just shares our experiences: what we did and how we made it. I am eager to learn more and hear your questions and comments thereof. You are also welcome to share your experiences during the discussion.”