Call Complexity and Creative Industry: Grip on Transitions and Resilience

Consortia of academic researchers, private partners e.g. businesses, governments and civil society organisations and public research institutes like TNO can request funding for innovative, transdisciplinary research into complex systems, to provide the creative professional with additional handles in developing solutions to persistent societal problems, which cannot be solved with conventional ways of governing or design.

The objective of the Complexity and Creative Industry: Grip on Transitions and Resilience Call is to stimulate innovative, transdisciplinary research into complex systems in order to provide the creative professional with more tools for developing solutions for persistent social problems that cannot be resolved with conventional governance or design methods.

The focus in this Call for Proposals is on research into complex systems for the Top Sector Creative Industry. The transitions (digitisation, energy) that are currently underway in society compel creative professionals to adopt a new way of working. There is a strong demand for more knowledge about how they – working in close cooperation with domain-specific experts – can design system interventions in order to address major social challenges at meso (a social sector) and macro (society) level. One of the challenges is to create a resilient society.

The question how individuals contribute to the dynamics of the system, for instance via their networks, plays a major role in this connection. Researchers in the field of complex systems work on comparable questions. They are studying ways of getting a grip on complex phenomena which arise at the macro level of a system through the local interactions at micro level between the multiple elements and actors in the system.

So far, however, there have been relatively few exchanges between the approaches focusing on the Creative Industry and the complex systems research methods. This area thus presents interesting research challenges and opportunities.

When to apply

• The deadline for the submission of compulsory pre-proposal applications is 17 January 2019, 14:00 hours CET.
• The deadline for the submission of full proposal applications is 18 April 2019, 14:00 hours CEST.

Who can apply
Full, associate and assistant professors and other researchers with a comparable appointment can submit an application if they:

• are employed (i.e. hold a salaried position) at a Dutch university or a research institution acknowledged by NWO, and
• also have an appointment period for at least the duration of the application procedure and the entire duration of the research for which the grant is being applied for. Personnel with a zero-hour appointment is excluded from applying.

In a project, at least one private partner and at least one (applying) knowledge institution work together (see sections 3.1 and 3.2 for the conditions for participation).

For more information about this call, please visit the NWO website.