ERC Public Engagement with Research Award

European Commission

Sciences de la vie (8)

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With the ERC Public Engagement with Research Award, the ERC wishes to reward outstanding science communicators among its Principal Investigators who successfully engage audiences outside their domain with ERC-funded research. The purpose of award is also to recognise good practice in science communication and to encourage more ERC grantees to develop public engagement activities.

For the purposes of this prize, public engagement is defined as the involvement of the public in the design, conduct, or dissemination of activities funded by the ERC. Engagement is a two-way process, involving interaction and mutual understanding for mutual benefit.

The public engagement activities may include, for example:

Citizen science activities conducted in collaboration or consultation with the public at any stage of the frontier research project, from design to implementation. Citizen science initiatives comprise activities such as public consultations or citizen juries.

Public outreach activities putting the spotlight on a research topic by disseminating its content, promoting discussion, or inspiring potential future researchers. Public outreach initiatives can consist of diverse activities, such as art and science projects, educational programmes, exhibitions, and can include diverse audiences and venues such as students, schools, museums, or science festivals.

Activities that foster consultation and exchange with citizen groups to raise awareness on a topic, to address a societal challenge, or to contribute to an issue in the public debate. These activities can be undertaken based on preliminary or final project results, as well as any particular result or output generated in the context of an ERC frontier research project. Examples of people and organisations that are likely to be engaged include journalists, policy makers at regional, national, or international level, non-governmental organisations, citizen or patient groups, product users.

Financement

10.000 €

Pour postuler

Les instructions pour postuler n'ont pas encore été fournies.

Requis d'admission

eneral conditions

1. Admissibility Conditions: Proposal page limit and layout

Applications must be submitted before the submission deadline via the submission tool available through the EC Funding & Tenders opportunities Portal. Further detailed guidance in the 'IT HOW TO' wiki site.

Eligible participants: All Principal Investigators in an ERC frontier research project, that is either ongoing or has ended on or after 31/12/2023, are eligible to apply.

Applications should be submitted by a single Principal Investigator, who has responsibility for the content of the application. In the case of Synergy Grants, each Principal Investigator may submit an application for the public engagement activities, which the specific Principal Investigator has worked on, provided that these activities are different from those of the other Principal Investigators. If several Principal Investigators of a Synergy project have conducted public engagement activities together, they may exceptionally submit a joint application. One of them should be the lead applicant.

Each Principal Investigator may submit only one application per ERC project.

Eligible activities: All applications must refer to public engagement activities for an ERC-funded project, regardless of the sources of funding for the public engagement activities themselves. These activities should be sufficiently mature to demonstrate impact.

Applications must be complete and contain all the requested information and all required annexes and supporting documents:

a) Administrative proposal forms: available on this page below and online via the submission tool - EU Funding & Tenders opportunities Portal - registration to the EU Funding & Tenders opportunities Portal is required first.

b) Contest proposal (Part B), available in the submission tool below, should be uploaded in the submission tool as PDF file. Proposal page limits and layout are described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System and in the Rules of Contest.

All applications must be complete, readable, accessible, and be submitted before the submission deadline.

Applications, which do not meet these criteria, may be declared inadmissible.

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System

2. Eligible Countries

described in the ERC Work Programme 2026 and Annex 3.

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other Eligible Conditions

described in the ERC Work Programme 2026 and Annexes.

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion

described in section 7 of the Rules of Contest.

5a. Evaluation and award: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds

are described in section 9 of the Rules of Contest

The quality of the applications received will be evaluated on the basis of two weighted award criteria:

Strategy and implementation: quality of the public engagement strategy and its implementation, including appropriateness of the used tools, channels and resources and the implementation to the objectives and audience of the action. Degree of novelty or creativity of the approach.
Impact: quantitative and qualitative evidence of the activity’s success in achieving its own public engagement objectives, including vidence of learning by the research team and/or the public who engaged in the activity on how to successfully engage with each other.