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ESS26 - Resilience and Crises / Scope of the Call

Introduction and general scope of the call 
Societies are entering an era of increasing uncertainty where new crises emerge and familiar ones return in transformed, and probably even more damaging ways. There can be no return to the “good old times”: the past cannot be restored, nor the present preserved in its entirety. Yet many civilizational and democratic achievements remain worth safeguarding, even as crises demand new societal approaches and innovative solutions. In this context, resilience is not a fixed condition but an active practice—one that must be deliberately cultivated, continuously exercised, and critically refined. Social science research plays a crucial role in understanding these transformations and generating the knowledge, tools, and networks needed to strengthen societies’ capacity to respond, adapt, and thrive amidst uncertainty.
The objective of this call is to support exploratory, interdisciplinary research projects, led by social scientists, that advance the conceptualization of resilience in relation to selected crises—primarily with regard to their societal dimensions. Projects should initiate structured collaboration with other scientific disciplines and relevant practitioner communities, and employ methodological approaches capable of anticipating potential future crisis events.

Key Requirements 
  • The project’s Principal Investigator & Coordinator should come from the social sciences in a wide sense, as demonstrated by their scientific track record.
  • Projects should address a crisis or a limited set of crises where strengthening societal resilience is crucial, and where the second phase of funding can be used to develop actionable and practical solutions with real-world impacts.
  • With a view to the second funding phase, the crisis/crises should be chosen so that addressing it critically depends on the generation of new scientific knowledge, thereby ensuring that the project also leads to scientific publications and academic theses.
  • The chosen crisis/crises should be suitable for collaboration with partners from other disciplines and, in the second funding phase, also with practitioner communities. 
    • Collaboration between at least two scientific disciplines is required to ensure an interdisciplinary approach.
  • Projects should clearly demonstrate how they will engage with the societal context of their chosen crisis/crises and – as an outcome of the project –establish meaningful collaborations/networks with practitioner communities. 
  • Proposed projects should outline how they plan to anticipate potential future crises scenarios. A wide range of anticipatory methodologies and approaches are welcome.

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