As detailed below by Professor David Sylvan, Head of Research at the Graduate Institute, the first quarter of 2017 was an incredibly successful period for the Institute in terms of the number, and monetary amounts, of research funding received.
No fewer than 8 grants were awarded from the Swiss National Science Foundation, for a total of 4.911 million francs. Two more grants were awarded by the European Union, for an additional 1.735 million francs. Two projects were funded by the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (1.572 million); and four other projects from international organisations or private companies (0.301 million). Altogether, this adds up to 16 projects at 8.521 million francs, which is excellent news for our researchers, our students, and, more generally, the Institute as a whole. With these most recent awards on top of the numerous projects already underway, the Institute is positioning itself as a prime location in which to carry out multi-employee, multi-year projects.
There is, of course, no necessity for research to be carried out in project form. Many important findings have been and continue to be generated by individual faculty or students working on their own, without external funding. But in light of how vital funding can be – whether to administer surveys, finance a field experiment, pay for data coders, hire computer programmers, or offset travel and living costs incurred in an archive visit or a participant-observation study – the range of grant possibilities in and out of Switzerland is a great opportunity, which more and more researchers are now pursuing.