ERC Public Engagement with Research Award
European Comission
ExpectedOutcome :
Up to six prizes will be awarded under this work programme of a value of EUR 10 000 each.
Objective :
With the ERC Public Engagement with Research award, the ERC wishes to recognise and reward outstanding science communicators among its Principal Investigators who successfully engage audiences outside their domain with ERC-funded research.
Public engagement is defined for the purposes of this prize as the involvement of the public in the design, conduct or dissemination of activities funded by the ERC. Engagement is a two-way process, involving interaction and mutual understanding for mutual benefit.
The public engagement activities may include, for example:
- Citizen science activities conducted in collaboration or consultation with the public at any stage of the frontier research project, including its design. Citizen science initiatives comprise activities such as public consultations or citizen juries.
- Public outreach activities putting the spotlight on a research topic by disseminating its content, promoting discussion or inspiring potential future researchers. Public outreach initiatives can consist of diverse activities, such as art and science projects, educational programmes, exhibitions, and can include diverse audiences and venues such as students, schools, museums or science festivals.
- Activities that foster consultation and exchange with citizen groups to raise awareness on a topic, to address a societal challenge or to contribute to an issue in the public debate. These activities can be undertaken based on preliminary or final project results, as well as any particular result or output generated in the context of an ERC frontier research project. Examples of people and organisations that are likely to be engaged include journalists, policy makers at regional, national or international level, non-governmental organisations, citizen or patient groups, product users.
General conditions
- Admissibility and eligibility conditions: described in the ERC Work Programme 2024
Applications must be submitted before the submission deadline via the submission tool available through the EC Funding & Tenders opportunities Portal. Further detailed guidance in the 'IT HOW TO' wiki site .
Eligible participants : All Principal Investigators in an ERC frontier research project, that is either ongoing or has ended on or after 31/12/2021, are eligible to apply.
Applications should be submitted by a single Principal Investigator, who has responsibility for the content of the application. In the case of Synergy Grants, each Principal Investigator may submit an application for the public engagement activities, which the specific Principal Investigator has worked on, provided that these activities are different from those of the other Principal Investigators. If several Principal Investigators of a Synergy project have conducted public engagement activities together, they may exceptionally submit a joint application. One of them should be the lead applicant. Each Principal Investigator may submit only one application per ERC project.
Eligible activities: All applications must refer to public engagement activities for an ERC-funded project, regardless of the sources of funding for the public engagement activities themselves. These activities should be sufficiently mature to demonstrate impact.
Applications must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents :
a) Administrative proposal forms: available on this page below and online via the submission tool - EU Funding & Tenders opportunities Portal - registration to the EU Funding & Tenders opportunities Portal is required first.
b) Contest proposal (Part B), available in the submission tool below, should be uploaded in the submission tool as PDF file. Proposal page limits and layout are described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System and in the Rules of Contest.
All applications must be complete, readable, accessible, and be submitted before the submission deadline. Applications, which do not meet these criteria, may be declared inadmissible.
Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System
Eligible countries: described in the ERC Work Programme 2024 and Annex 3.
Other eligibility conditions: described in the ERC Work Programme 2024 and Annexes
Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in section 7 of the Rules of Contest .
Evaluation and award: described in the ERC Work Programme 2024 and in the Rules of Contest
Applications will be subject to a formal evaluation by a jury. If there are more than 30 applications, there will be a pre-selection to select up to 30 best applications to pass to the jury review. Otherwise, all applications will pass directly to jury review. The pre-selection panel and jury usually have a different composition, but jury members may participate in the pre-selection panel. The pre-selection panel or jury will evaluate each application against the award criteria. For applications with the same score, the pre-selection panel or jury will determine a priority order according to the following approach: the applicant who obtained a higher score for the criterion No 2, will be given a priority. If two or more applications tie for the 30th position during the pre-selection, all these applications will pass to jury review. For the award of the prize, if two or more applications still tie for the 6th position after the application of the priority order above during the jury review, the prize amount for the 6th position will be equally divided and awarded to all applications with the same score.
- Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in section 9 of the Rules of Contes t
The quality of the applications received will be evaluated on the basis of two weighted award criteria:
- Strategy and implementation: quality of the public engagement strategy and its implementation, including appropriateness of the used tools, channels and resources and the implementation to the objectives and audience of the action. Degree of novelty or creativity of the approach.
- Impact: quantitative and qualitative evidence of the activity’s success in achieving its own public engagement objectives, including possible evidence of learning by the research team and/or the public who engaged in the activity on how to successfully engage with the public.
Submission and evaluation processes are described in the ERC Work Programme 2024, in the Rules of Contest and the Online Manual
Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in the ERC Work Programme 2024 and in the Rules of Contest
- Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in section 10 of the Rules of Contest
Documents
Call documents:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/wp-call/2024/roc_erc-2024-pera_en.pdfERC Work Programme 2024
Application form — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System
Additional documents:
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual