ISRF: Small Group Projects Grant

ISRF: Small Group Projects Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Independent Social Research Foundation
Last Updated: August 02, 2025

Summary

The Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) supports innovative small group projects in social sciences, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. Established in 2008, the ISRF provides funding opportunities to advance new modes of inquiry and methodologies. The foundation encourages applications from diverse disciplines and promotes critical approaches to address empirical issues. Small group awards facilitate collaborative work through workshops and academic visits, enhancing research development across humanities and natural sciences.

Overview

About The Independent Social Research Foundation is a public benefit foundation funded by a group of private philanthropists with interests in academia and social science, founded in 2008. The ISRF is dedicated to advancing the social sciences through the promotion of new modes of inquiry and the development of interdisciplinary expertise and methods, and through better understanding of social entities and processes. What We Do To achieve this objective the ISRF provide a series of funding opportunities, enters into partnerships with academic institutions and supports research activities that promote development across the social sciences and humanities. Funding Philosophy The ISRF seeks to fund innovative research which breaks with existing explanatory frameworks so as to address afresh empirical problems with no currently adequate theory or investigative methodology. Innovation may also come from controversial theoretical approaches motivated by critical challenge of incumbent theories. Interdisciplinarity in the generation of new investigative initiatives may be achieved by combining and transforming empirical methods and theoretical insights from the social sciences. Projects ranging across the breadth of the social scientific disciplines and interdisciplinary research fields are welcome, and relevant applications from scholars working within the humanities and the natural sciences are also encouraged. Small Group Projects The ISRF regularly offers support to small groups of scholars working collaboratively. The Flexible Grants for Small Groups competition currently runs annually (usually in the second half of the calendar year). Generally speaking, ISRF small group awards are intended as enabling one or more short periods of face-to-face joint group work such as workshops, working-in-pairs, or short academic visits (e-working, video-conferencing or Skype expenses are not included).

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. The ISRF regularly offers support to small groups of scholars working collaboratively.