VolkswagenStiftung NEXT 'Dual Use' of Ideas and Concepts from the Humanities and Social Sciences: Up to €650,000 for a Two-Year Team Project on How Academic Theory Gets Repurposed, Closing 6 October 2026

VolkswagenStiftung NEXT ‘Dual Use’ of Ideas and Concepts from the Humanities and Social Sciences: Up to €650,000 for a Two-Year Team Project on How Academic Theory Gets Repurposed, Closing 6 October 2026

For more than two decades, “dual use” has been a term of art in the life sciences, engineering and the natural sciences: a pathogen study, a piece of software or a materials advance that serves civilian purposes can also serve military ones. The Volkswagen Foundation’s new call takes that term and points it somewhere it has rarely been pointed — at the humanities and the social sciences. The question is not whether a sociologist’s findings can be weaponised in a laboratory sense. It is what happens when a theory, a conceptual framework or a mode of thought is lifted out of the scholarly context that gave it meaning and put to work for deception, manipulation or disinformation.

The call funds teams of two or three researchers for up to two years, with a ceiling of €450,000 for a two-person team and €650,000 for a three-person team. Applications close at 2 p.m. CEST on 6 October 2026, and final decisions are expected in April 2027. This guide sets out what the Foundation is asking for, who is eligible, what the budget can and cannot cover, and how to approach a proposal that a single-stage interdisciplinary panel will read.

Key Details

What the Foundation Is Actually Funding

The programme sits inside the Foundation’s “NEXT” umbrella, which gathers thematic calls aimed at new or under-researched topics with high knowledge potential. The profile for this particular call is “Exploration”, and that word carries weight in how proposals will be read. This is not a call for the consolidation of an established research line. It is a call for work on a phenomenon that the guidelines describe plainly as under-researched.

Three aims are stated. The first is exploratory, interdisciplinary basic research into the occurrence, mechanisms and conditions under which concepts, theories and findings from the humanities and social sciences are repurposed. The second is to create room for reflection on the philosophy of science, and to develop what the guidelines call reception-sensitive forms of theory-building — approaches that take seriously the tension between the risk of instrumentalisation and the freedom of research and teaching. The third is to generate knowledge for the responsible handling of findings in these disciplines, and to give impetus to reflective science communication.

That third aim connects to a broader question the Foundation raises: how does the uptake of scholarly concepts in unexpected contexts relate to the growing demand that the humanities and social sciences demonstrate social relevance and impact? A proposal that treats misappropriation purely as a problem to be stamped out will likely read as thin. The call is more interested in the structural relationship between reach and distortion.

The Research Question Behind the Call

The Foundation gives concrete examples of what it means, and they are worth reading closely because they set the register of the call.

The scholarly insight that knowledge is socially constructed can be compressed into the claim that every truth is merely an opinion — a claim then used to delegitimise science, the media and public institutions. Central ideas associated with poststructuralism, such as the notion that meanings are fluid and identities are formed through language and habit, can be detached from their epistemological and ethical context and deployed as rhetorical tools. Postcolonial approaches are sometimes reinterpreted in political discourse to defend a supposed “right to difference”.

The guidelines distinguish two levels that applicants should keep separate. One is ideologically motivated conceptual or theoretical development occurring inside scientific discourse itself. The other is the unintended effect of concepts and theories in non-scientific contexts through ideologically motivated appropriation. The Foundation is explicit that unintended effects need not always be ideologically motivated, but that this call focuses specifically on anti-liberal, anti-scientific and anti-democratic appropriations.

Suggested lines of enquiry named in the guidelines include: features of humanities and social science concepts that facilitate ideologically motivated repurposing; what reception-sensitive theory-building might look like without restricting academic freedom; the pathways of transfer and networks of actors through which ideas move from academic into political, ideological or digital public spheres; the conditions under which reinterpretations become especially potent, in the interplay of academic debate, media dynamics and political interest; and the consequences for science communication — how complex or critical concepts can be communicated without being easily oversimplified or exploited.

Who Can Apply: Team Composition and Institutional Requirements

The eligible unit is a project team of two to three researchers: one principal investigator and up to two co-principal investigators. There is no route here for a lone scholar.

All applicants must have completed a doctorate. The Foundation’s general FAQ notes that in individual calls it can be sufficient to have submitted the dissertation, but any such exception is specified in the guidelines for that call — do not assume it applies unless you find it there.

The call is aimed at researchers with a PhD employed at German universities and research institutions. Researchers with a PhD based at international research institutions may participate as Co-PIs. Where there is international participation, the partner at the German research institution must create the application on the funding platform and be defined as the PI; otherwise PI and Co-PIs are equal partners. Lead applicants who are not yet employed at an eligible German institution can attach a statement in which the management of the university or research group confirms it will employ them and administer the third-party funds if the grant is approved.

Grants can only be awarded to universities or scientific institutions in Germany, or comparable scientific institutions abroad. Applicants based at foundations or private companies are not themselves eligible, but can be involved in a project as cooperation partners.

Two exclusions catch people out. The Foundation does not fund projects that continue work it has previously funded, and it will not process an application that has been, or is intended to be, submitted in the same or similar form to another funding organisation in parallel. You may hold other funding — an ERC grant, for instance — provided the Volkswagen Foundation proposal is clearly differentiated thematically. You may not submit more than one project for the same deadline.

What the Money Covers — and What It Does Not

The funding type is described as collaborative projects, with support for a teaching substitute and for dedicated positions for postdoctoral researchers. Within the ceiling, the guidelines list eligible categories including research staff — substitute teaching staff, dedicated postdoctoral positions and research assistants — and travel expenses and other research funds, covering travel and conference costs, the involvement of project partners in Germany and abroad, research visits to other institutions, and workshops.

One restriction is stated flatly and matters for budget design: funding cannot be requested for doctoral positions. If your project structure assumes a PhD student doing the fieldwork, restructure it before you build the expenditure plan.

Several additional lines can be layered on top:

• Overheads. Public or non-profit scientific institutions in Germany can apply for 10% overheads in addition to direct project costs, and the same applies to comparable institutions abroad. Max Planck, Leibniz, Fraunhofer and Helmholtz institutes are excepted.
• Equal Opportunity Funds. These are granted in addition to the maximum funding sum, as a lump sum of 1% of the total application amount excluding overheads. They support measures that compensate for disadvantages at an individual level or strengthen diversity in the research system. You indicate the request in the expenditure plan; no further documents are needed.
• Science communication. The Foundation encourages science communication as part of funded projects, but as a general rule the budget for it may not exceed 5% of the total direct project costs requested, excluding overheads. The guidelines give a worked example: for a total of €500,000, a maximum of €25,000.

The Foundation also states that funds must not be used to relieve an institution’s base budget, to cover budget shortfalls, or to cause other funders to reduce their grants. It cannot be held responsible for obligations entered into before a grant approval is received.

Application Materials and the Funding Platform

Everything is submitted electronically through the Volkswagen Foundation’s Funding Platform. Templates for the project description, expenditure plan, CVs and data management plan are available for download both on the platform and on the programme announcement page, and the guidelines are emphatic that only these templates may be used.

The materials break down as follows:

• Project description. Use the template and observe its specifications on maximum page count and other formal requirements.
• Expenditure plan. An Excel template available only on the funding platform — other spreadsheets cannot be uploaded. Note that each Co-PI has to submit an individual expenditure plan, which means the budget work is distributed across the team and needs coordination well before the deadline.
• Curricula vitae. Submitted for all applicants in tabular, narrative form using the provided template.
• Data management plan. Required where the project generates large amounts of data. The Foundation is committed to open science: it expects results to be published open access and data to be made available for scientific use under the FAIR principles via recognised repositories. If you do not intend to generate or reuse data, the guidelines ask you to state that clearly in the project description. A separate module offers additional funding to prepare research data, available during the project or up to six months after it ends.

A practical point that causes real delays: all applicants, including Co-PIs, must register on the platform early. Co-applicants can only be invited to work on an application once they have registered. Technical support is available at [email protected].

Timeline: From the August Q&A to an April 2027 Decision

The published schedule is short and fixed:

• 11 August 2026, 10:00–11:30 CEST — online consultation session in German. No registration required; the access link is posted on the programme page beforehand.
• 8 September 2026, 10:00–11:30 CEST — online consultation session in English.
• 6 October 2026, 2:00 p.m. CEST — application deadline.
• April 2027 — final decisions.

The guidelines strongly recommend attending one of the consultation sessions. Given that this is a single-stage process with no outline round to correct course, that recommendation is worth taking literally. The Foundation will also arrange telephone consultation appointments by email, and it advises that pre-submission advice is limited to whether a project fits the funding initiative — no assessment of the subject matter itself can be given, since that belongs to the review.

Applications are assessed in a single-stage review by an interdisciplinary panel drawn from the humanities and social sciences. The panel makes a funding recommendation to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, which usually decides at meetings held three times a year.

How the Panel Will Judge Your Proposal

Four review criteria are named in the guidelines:

1. The contribution to the humanities, cultural studies and social sciences.
2. The innovative, exploratory and risk-taking nature of the research approach.
3. The coherence of the project design and methodology.
4. The academic qualifications of the project team and its synergies with regard to the feasibility and implementation of the project.

Criteria two and three pull in different directions, and reconciling them is the central drafting problem. The Foundation is asking for risk-taking within a design that a panel can see will work in twenty-four months. The fourth criterion is also more specific than it first appears: it does not just ask whether the investigators are good, but whether the team’s synergies serve feasibility. A two- or three-person team assembled from adjacent but genuinely different specialisms — say, a historian of science, a discourse analyst and a media sociologist — needs to explain why that particular combination is required by the research question, not merely that each member is accomplished.

Preparing a Competitive Proposal

Start from a case, not from a concept. The strongest proposals here are likely to be built around traceable instances of transfer — a specific idea, a documented pathway out of scholarship, an identifiable set of actors and venues — rather than a general argument that misappropriation happens. The guidelines’ own framing of “pathways of transfer and networks of actors” invites empirical tracing.

Be careful about the politics of your own framing. The call names anti-liberal, anti-scientific and anti-democratic appropriation as its focus, but it also asks how reception-sensitive theory-building can work “without restricting the freedom of research and teaching”. A proposal that reads as an argument for policing which concepts scholars may publish sits badly against that sentence. The more defensible position is analytical: understand the mechanism, then ask what responsible communication looks like.

Give the reflexive dimension real space. The second and third stated aims — philosophy-of-science reflection and impulses for science communication — are easy to gesture at in a closing paragraph and easy for a panel to spot as an afterthought. Because science communication can also carry up to 5% of direct costs, there is budget room to make it concrete.

Design the budget around what is fundable. With doctoral positions excluded, the labour model has to rest on postdoctoral positions, research assistants and teaching substitution. Teaching substitution is worth considering seriously: for a PI with a heavy teaching load, buying out that time may do more for feasibility than an additional partial position.

Sequence the administrative work early. Platform registration for every applicant, an individual expenditure plan per Co-PI, tabular narrative CVs and a data management plan are not tasks for the final week, particularly across institutions and time zones.

Common Mistakes That Sink Applications Here

• Submitting as an individual or a team of four. The two-to-three structure, with one PI and up to two Co-PIs, is a hard constraint.
• Putting an international partner in the lead. Where there is international participation, the German institution’s researcher must create the application and be defined as PI.
• Budgeting a PhD position. Explicitly not fundable in this call.
• Using your own spreadsheet. The Excel expenditure template is the only accepted format, and it is only available on the platform.
• Parallel submission. A proposal submitted in the same or similar form to another funder will not be processed.
• Proposing a continuation. The Foundation does not fund follow-ups to projects it has already supported, and does not step in where another funder has withdrawn.
• Missing the clock, not the date. The deadline is 2 p.m. CEST on 6 October 2026, not end of day.
• Planning to resubmit after rejection. Rejected applications cannot be resubmitted in revised form. The same lead applicant may propose a new topic, and consultation with the programme director is recommended to confirm it is sufficiently distinct.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this call only for German researchers? The lead applicant must be at a German university or research institution, and grants are awarded to scientific institutions. Researchers with a doctorate at international institutions can take part as Co-PIs, and international cooperation is explicitly permitted.

What is the real maximum I can request? €450,000 for a two-PI team or €650,000 for a three-PI team, over up to two years. On top of that, most eligible institutions can add 10% overheads, and Equal Opportunity Funds can be requested as a further 1% lump sum of the total application amount excluding overheads.

Do I need a data management plan? It is required if your project generates large amounts of data, and it may be discussed in the review. If you do not intend to generate or reuse data, state that clearly in the project description.

How much feedback will I get if rejected? Little. The Foundation explains that it rarely solicits individual written reviews; applications are discussed in a panel meeting and the main criticisms are minuted, but those minutes are not shared with applicants, partly because they involve direct comparison with parallel applications.

Can my institution submit more than one application? In principle yes, unless a specific limit is set in the guidelines for the call. An individual may not submit multiple projects for the same deadline.

Is attending a Q&A session required? No, but the guidelines strongly recommend it, and no registration is needed — the access link is published on the programme page in advance.

Official Links and Contacts

The programme page, which carries the guidelines PDF, the application, CV and data management plan templates and the link to the funding platform, is the authoritative source:

• Programme announcement: https://www.volkswagenstiftung.de/en/funding/funding-offer/next-dual-use-ideas-and-concepts-humanities-and-social-sciences
• Guidelines (2026-20, as of June 2026), linked from that page
• Funding Platform: portal.volkswagenstiftung.de
• Platform technical support: [email protected]

Programme contacts named in the guidelines:

• Dr Pierre Schwidlinski — [email protected], +49 511 8381-228
• Dr Victoria Abakumovski — [email protected], +49 511 8381-285
• Tatjana Peters, administrative and organisational matters and telephone appointments — [email protected], +49 511 8381-397

Postal address: VolkswagenStiftung, Kastanienallee 35, 30519 Hannover, Germany.

If the topic fits your work, the sensible next steps are to join the English-language Q&A on 8 September 2026, confirm your team composition against the two-to-three rule, and get every applicant registered on the funding platform so the expenditure plans can be assembled without a last-minute scramble before 2 p.m. on 6 October.