Finite resources, social inequality, climate change, terrorism – the world is facing major challenges. The UN's "Sustainable Development Goals" are a contribution towards overcoming these threats. The Volkswagen Foundation, together with partner foundations in Europe, wants to underscore the role played by the sciences in reaching the SDG targets by offering a new funding scheme. Initially, support is given to international research projects on social inequality. Cooperative teams can be funded with up to 1.5 million Euro; deadline for applications is October 30, 2018.

Junior and senior grantees of the Foundation’s initiative for research in/on Central Asia and the Caucasus met to present and discuss project results

Freigeist-Fellow Dr. Laura Ewell develops a new new technique to identify brain cells within an intact functioning network. We talked to her about her research project, what fuels her curiosity and drives her as a researcher and a Freigeist.

For the first time, the lot luck decides in the funding initiative "Experiment!" on the eligibility of project applications. With this procedure, the Volkswagen Foundation enters new territory in the funding landscape.

The history surrounding the ethnographic collections in Hanover, Göttingen, Oldenburg, Hildesheim and Braunschweig will be the focus of a large collaborative project over the next three years.

Since 2014, the Foundation's Board of Trustees has been electing ten to fifteen Freigeist Fellows each year: These young research talents have an extraordinary research idea and are working at the borders of neighbouring fields or disciplines. In our second part of the interview, Dr. Johanna Brumberg and Dr. Oliver Grewe, program directors of the initiative, answer questions about the way to submitting an application and about the review process.