Who can apply and for what purpose?

The Foundation awards grants for finalizing Ph.D. theses, and for research visits related to Ph.D. thesis work in various fields of science. A grant awarded for finalizing a Ph.D. thesis should lead to the thesis being submitted for pre-examination by the end of the grant period.

Science grants are only awarded to private individuals.

An individual grant can be applied for by Finns or by people who work in Finland for the advancement of Finnish science, culture, and civil society. The grant is intended for full-time work, performed during the calendar year that follows the year the grant was awarded. Grants are not awarded retrospectively. Work may not begin before the December of the year the grant was awarded.

Post doc grants: information on the Post Doc Pool.

Grant criteria

The purpose of the Alfred Kordelin Foundation is to promote and support Finnish science, literature, arts, and public education. Applicants may receive grants if they, based on prior established work, are in a position to implement the plan that they have proposed. When evaluating grant applications, our experts pay attention to the significance of the topic as well as the quality, contents, schedule, and feasibility of the research plan. Moreover, the applicant’s activeness in the scientific field is taken into consideration, with things such as publications that are not related to the Ph.D. work and participation in international congresses taken into account.

Grant applications are evaluated and funding decisions made on the basis of the following issues:

• Project originality
• Feasibility of the implementation plan
• Earlier merits of the applicant
• Significance of the project. The applicant has considered how the project will advance their own professional capabilities and the field in general.

Grant applications are assessed in three pools as follows:

Humanities, pool 1.
Natural sciences, pool 2.
Social sciences, pool 3.

Grant applications are assessed in three phases:

1. Experts assess the applications assigned to the pool based on assessment criteria, select the applications that best fulfill said criteria, and write a commentary on their choices to the assessment system.
2. The experts acquaint themselves with all selected proposals prior to the pool’s general meeting.
3. Funding decisions are prepared in the pool’s general meeting and submitted to the Board for decisions.

Size and duration of the grant

In most cases, grants have a duration of 12 or 6 months. Working grants are intended for the continuous, full-time work of private individuals during a specified period of time. Grants are not awarded for part-time work. The size of a working grant is approximately €2,166 per month (Ph.D. theses).

You can include expenses such as material expenses, assistant expenses and purchased services into your work. Mela, the insurer of grant recipients, will accept expenses that account for max. half of the received grant. The grant covers employment pension insurance, occupational accident insurance, and group life insurance.  More information is available from Mela.

Grants

Grants are not awarded for expenses alone. Please note that work + expenses combined may not exceed the maximum amounts listed below.

• An individual twelve-month working grant of €26,000 for finalizing a Ph.D.
• An individual six-month working grant of €13,000 for finalizing a Ph.D.
• An individual working grant in some other amount. In some special circumstances, the applicant can apply for a grant with a duration of four months or more, but not exceeding 12 months.

Taxation

More information is available on the grant recipient page. Tax regulations may change, and their interpretation can to some extent vary. Consequently, the Alfred Kordelin Foundation cannot be held responsible for the correctness of this information, nor can it provide more detailed instructions on taxation. In any unclear instances, grant recipients should ask for instructions directly from the tax authorities (www.vero.fi).

Which field?

You can direct your application to one field of science. When drawing up your application, you must select the field whose experts you wish to evaluate your application. If your application is multidisciplinary, choose the field you yourself think best fits your project, or which best represents your application.

Fields

The Foundation supports research in the humanities and the natural and social sciences (finalizing Ph.D. theses and related research visits). Select the field of science to which your application pertains to in the online grant service.
For the time being, in the field of medicine the Foundation supports only research into heart and vascular disease by awarding grants for Ph.D. thesis finalization and thesis-related research visits. All more detailed instructions for applicants are available on this page.

See also the Helinä Wähä Fund grants for research on children with heart disease.

Applying for a grant

The application period is from 1 to 15 August 2023. The application period ends on 15 August 2023 at 4 pm Finnish time. Use the Foundation’s online grant service for your grant application. Grant applications can be created and sent in the grant online service only during the application period.

Prior to applying for a new grant, submit a usage report for any grants you have previously received from the Kordelin Foundation.

Net banking identification is required for grant applications. The application and its appendices must be delivered to the online service within the application period. Statements and diplomas can be submitted to the statement service and to the online grant service up to a specified date. The Foundation will not accept incomplete or late applications or their appendices.

Appendices

We recommend that you attach only the mandatory appendices to your application. If the application is incomplete, the service will prevent it from being sent until the missing information has been added.

Guidelines for drawing up and delivering appendices

• All appendices must be in pdf format, and they must be sent via the grant online service as individual files.
• The maximum size of an appendix is 3 MB.
• Name the appendices in a way that describes their contents, and avoid special characters.
• The length of a working plan must not exceed five (5) pages.

Contact your supervisor in good time and ask them to deliver a statement to the statement online service.

Diplomas here mean a master’s diploma.

Deadlines for appendices

• 15 August 2023 degree diploma, CV, working plan, list of publications, invitation (in case of research visit)
• 22 August 2023 for supervisor’s statement on the progress of the work, submitted to the statement service.

Doctoral dissertations

• CV (mandatory)
• Work plan (mandatory)
• Publication list (mandatory)
• Statement on the progress of your work (mandatory, request your supervisor to deliver this to the statement service)
• Diploma (mandatory)

Research visits

• CV (mandatory)
• Work plan (mandatory)
• Publication list (mandatory)
• Diploma (mandatory)
• Invitation (mandatory)

Decisions

The decisions on awarded grants are made by the Board of Directors of the Alfred Kordelin Foundation in October. All applicants will receive information on the decisions in November via email.