This UNIC Seed Fund Initiative aims to support collaborative "Engaged Research" initiatives across our partner universities, sparking new ideas for tackling societal challenges in post-industrial cities.
On this page, you can learn about what Engaged Research means, what qualifies for seed funding, and how to apply. Timelines, application forms, and the fine print are all below. You can find additional information in downloadable PDFs. If you have further questions regarding the call, please reach out to UNIC coordinator(s) in your host institution.
The European University of Post-Industrial cities (UNIC) is an alliance of ten universities impacting education, research, and community engagement to develop post-industrial cities. The UNIC Alliance is located in transitory economies and places that constitute a shared socio-economic environment of post-industrial transformations. Our universities are expected to play a key role in the transition of their cities to become centres of knowledge concerning transformations by engaging with research into the very processes and learning on resilience, adaptation, co-creation, etc.
UNIC researchers tackle societal challenges by involving and engaging citizens, civil society, public/city authorities, and private businesses in research and innovation activities. Engaged Research offers an interdisciplinary approach and method for systematic knowledge production not only for society but also together with society.
In order to increase the amount of collaborative engaged research initiatives within the UNIC consortium and provide support to researchers to coordinate those initiatives, seed funds are allocated to the members of the Alliance.
“UNIC Seed Fund” offers small-scale support for engaged research project proposal development across all disciplines within the UNIC consortium and beyond. This can be a Horizon Europe, JPI Urban Europe, AMIF, Digital Europe, Interreg, or similar national or international project proposal based on or inspired by our UNIC Cities’ challenges and opportunities collected in the Local Engaged Research Roadmaps (file provided at the end of the page).
We recommend first contacting the UNIC coordinator in your host institution for local guidance. In general, the following documents should be submitted as a single PDF file: