Kone Foundation Academic Research Grant (Finland)

Additionally, they fund cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary work between the fields and disciplines supported by the Foundation.

Project Categories

• Research
• Art
• Research and art
• Another type of cultural work

Foundation’s Strategy

• Focuses
  • Academic and artistic freedom and the intrinsic value of research and art:
    • They see research and art as valuable in and of themselves and not, for example, as means to generate profit. They rarely fund product development. Academic endeavours and artistic work must be developed freely on one’s own premises.
  • A plurality of voices:
    • They want different voices to be heard, and they encourage collaboration. In the funding decisions, they emphasise projects and topics that are multidisciplinary and novel and seek to challenge prevailing views.
    • A project’s topic can be chosen freely, as long as the discipline is funded by the Foundation.
  • Boldness:
    • One of the central values is boldness, which includes experimentation, incompleteness, indeterminacy and a combination of unexpected approaches.
  • Long term:
    • The Foundation supports work done in peace, and it emphasises multi-year personal grants for academic and artistic work.
  • Crossing borders, both national and disciplinary:
    • They support transnationalism, which can apply to Finnish grantees working abroad or foreign grantees working in Finland. They encourage the applicants to combine research and art in multidisciplinary projects.
  • Environmental sustainability:
    • Also in projects not related to environmental issues, they take into account responsibility for the environment, especially in the context of travelling. They encourage you to avoid flying if possible and to favor low-emission travelling.
• Research funding
  • They can fund high-quality research in the humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences, artistic research and multidisciplinary work that involves the academic fields mentioned above.
  • In artistic research or arts-based research, the artistic and academic aspects interact, and the work usually takes place at a university with degree programmes in art. Artistic research often has a connection with the researcher’s own artistic or arts pedagogy work.
  • The Foundation does not fund research in psychology, theology, law studies or business studies without an interdisciplinary dimension. Medical research is not supported.
  • In research funding decisions, the emphasis is on post-doctoral studies and more advanced stages of careers.
• Art funding
  • The Foundation supports professional artistic work in all fields of art.
  • The emphasis is on artistic work, but the Foundation can, in exceptional cases, support cultural initiatives, such as work in museums that does not involve artistic work. However, the proportion of other kinds of cultural work in the Foundation’s funding decisions is marginal.
• Programmes and thematic calls
  • In 2021, Kone Foundation launched the programme “Is Democracy Eroding?”. Thematic funding calls will be evaluated separately from the general call. The general call is open and non-thematic, which means that the applications need not have a connection with the programme or the topics of the special calls.
  • No thematic funding call of the Democracy programme will be organised in 2023. The themes of the programme “Is Democracy Eroding?” will be taken into account in the general call of 2023.
• Grant statistics
  • Most of Kone Foundation funding is awarded as personal grants for academic research, artistic work or work that combines research and art.

Funding Information

• Grant 1: early career applicants and those working on their doctoral thesis €2,700/month (€32,400/year).
• Grant 2: mid-career applicants (min. 10 years of artistic work) and those working at the post-doctoral level €3,200/month (€38,400/year).
• Grant 3: late career applicants (min. 20 years of artistic work) and experienced researchers (e.g., adjunct professor level, “dosentti” in the Finnish academic system) €3,800/month (€45,600/year).
• Grants for individuals are mainly not awarded for work lasting less than 6 months. Working groups or organisations have a minimum of 1 month for each individual working grant.
• Grants can be applied for part-time work (25%, 50% or 75% of full grant).
• They usually recommend that working groups and organisations applying for larger project funding in the arts (min. 150 000 euros) contact the Foundation’s application advice before submitting an application.

Eligibility Criteria

• An individual, a working group or a legal entity can apply for a grant from Kone Foundation. If you’re applying as a legal entity, you need to have a Finnish business ID. If the applicant is a working group or legal entity, the group members must choose a project leader from among themselves to be responsible for submitting the application.
• To receive funding, projects must have a connection to Finland. In general, Kone Foundation’s grants are intended for:
  • Finns, for work carried out in Finland or abroad
  • foreigners, for work carried out in Finland
  • foreigners, for project work that includes participants based in Finland
• If the work to be done is not artistic or academic, one should apply for a grant to pay salary expenses.
• The topic of the project applied for can be freely chosen, as long as the discipline belongs to the fields funded by the Foundation. A grant from Kone Foundation must be used for the purpose for which it is awarded.
• Kone Foundation grants can be applied for:
  • academic research in the humanities, social sciences, environmental sciences and artistic research
  • professional artistic work in all fields of art
  • multidisciplinary work in the above-mentioned fields of art and research
  • promotion of academic and/or artistic work in the above-mentioned fields (e.g. a project developing the field)
  • promotion and dissemination of academic and/or artistic work in the above-mentioned fields (e.g., research popularisation, artistic outreach, events and publications)
  • other cultural work; but this is rarely funded.

For more information, visit Kone Foundation.