This is about the future of your research area: What is the current status? What prospects are there for further development - and how can they be realised? With the "Scoping Workshops" the foundation offers space for discussion and intensive exchange. Deadline for application: April 1, 2025

We are proud to announce a new user-optimised funding platform, which will launch in early 2025. Important: Our current "Application and report system" will be unavailable from the end of November 2024. You will be able to apply for funding again from mid-January 2025. More about the funding platform - and what applicants and grantees need to know.

Fabien Schultz heads the new junior research group Ethnopharmacology and Zoopharmacognosy at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM). He collects natural remedies in African countries - and investigates the neuroactive self-medication of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas and elephants.

Academic freedom is coming under increasing pressure worldwide. Yet it is essential for scientific knowledge and good teaching. To draw attention to the importance of academic freedom and how it has changed over the decades, researchers have developed the interactive "Globe of Academic Freedom", which was made accessible to the public for the first time this year on the MS Wissenschaft.

The 'Momentum - funding for recently tenured professors' initiative offers researchers the opportunity to further develop their professorship in terms of content and strategy at an early stage after taking up their first tenured full professorship. In our interview, Selahattin Danisman, program director at the Volkswagen Foundation, explains the key aspects of 'Momentum'. Next deadline: 28 April 2025

How do taboos emerge in science? What exactly is considered taboo in different fields? And how can these taboos be dismantled? These are some of the questions that will be addressed during the theme week from September 17–19, 2025 in Hannover. Apply now for a scientific symposium, deadline: February 11, 2025.