More freedom to take risks: DFG funds the first Reinhart Kosellec...( The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ...)

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) has given six scientists more freedom to do especially innovative and higher-risk research. They are the first researchers to be awarded funding under the DFG's Reinhart Koselleck Projects programme. They will each receive a lump sum of between 500,000 euros and 1.25 million euros for their planned research work, which they will be able to use flexibly over a five-year period.

The DFG's Reinhart Koselleck Projects grants programme allows recognised scientists and researchers to conduct research projects that would be impossible under the auspices of their own institution or other DFG funding programmes. Since it is usually more difficult to plan particularly innovative and risky research than it is for normal research work, the only application requirements are a five-page project outline, although the applicants are also expected to have a proven track record in order to justify the trust and confidence placed in them. "What we are interested in is bold ideas and people who are capable of putting them into practice," explained the President of the DFG, Professor Matthias Kleiner, on announcement of the first awards by the Joint Committee of Germany's largest research funding organisation. Even renowned researchers who wanted to do higher-risk, promising research have had no such opportunities to apply for funding, Kleiner continued. "The unusually high level of risk may be an adventurous idea, an original hypothesis or even a novel or innovatively applied methodology. The Reinhart Koselleck Projects thus close a crucial gap in the DFG's portfolio and in German research funding as a whole."

The patron of the new funding programme is Reinhart Koselleck, one of the most important German historians of the 20th century, who died in 2006 and was one of the founding fathers of modern social history in Germany. The Koselleck Projects programme was initiated in January 2008 by th
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