Research grants

ÅAU research grants 2025

The Graduate School at Åbo Akademi University announces general ÅAU doctoral research grants 2025 for application. The grants are awarded from funds made available by the Åbo Akademi University Foundation. For more detailed application criteria, please see section a) below.

The electronic application form should be filled out and submitted no later than on Friday, March 14, 2025, at 23.59.

I Grants for doctoral students

a) General ÅAU doctoral research grants (max 12 mån)

General criteria

Doctoral research grants can be applied for by

doctoral researchers at Åbo Akademi University, enrolled and registered as present within the application deadline

The grants are intended for full-time research (leave of absence required).

Grants are paid in monthly installments. The grant is 2300 €/month.

In this announcement grants are awarded for 4-12 months. The grant period can start May 1, 2025, at the earliest, and the whole grant needs to be used before July 31, 2026.

The application should include

the estimated time (mm/year) for the public defense
a complete account of all previous funding received for the doctoral studies

Please note that doctoral researchers who have already received funding for 48 months (or more) are not entitled to apply for a grant in this specific announcement. Previously received funding will also be considered in the grant decision; if a doctoral research grant is awarded, the total received funding can amount to a maximum of 48 months.

Deadline for application is Friday, March 14, 2025, at 23.59.

The application is made in the new ÅAU grant application portal stipendier.abo.fi. The first time you are applying for a grant in the portal, you need to create a user profile by registering as a new user (e-mail + password of your own choosing).

IMPORTANT: All who have an abo.fi user account are obliged to use their abo.fi email address to create the user profile.

In the grant application portal there are three different applicant types (Individual applicant, Workgroup, Organisation). Please note that for the doctoral research grants you should use the type “Individual applicant”.

For the application you need to prepare a research plan. The research plan is submitted as a separate pdf file (only pdf accepted). Please note, that for the application to go forward in the application and evaluation process, the research plan must be written as stated in the instructions:

Instructions for the research plan

For the application you will need to prepare a CV (curriculum vitae), which is submitted as a separate pdf file (only pdf accepted). The CV should be composed according to the template for researcher´s curriculum vitae by The Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity

Evaluation process and criteria

The applications are evaluated for each faculty by grant committee of the Strategic Council for Research (FoR) at Åbo Akademi University.

The evaluators do not assess any applicant which they supervise or any projects in which they are involved.

Scale

The research plan is evaluated according to the following criteria: academic quality (scale 0-5) and feasibility (within the allotted time) (scale 0-5)

Academic quality
- 0 = Poor: Very poor application and/or not feasible time frame
- 1 = Weak: Few strengths and several major weaknesses
- 2 = Fair: Some strengths, but at least one major weakness or a number of minor weaknesses.
- 3 = Good: Strong plan with minor weaknesses
- 4 = Excellent: Very strong plan with negligible weaknesses
- 5 = Outstanding: Exceptionally strong plan with negligible weaknesses

Feasibility (within the allotted time)
- 0-1 = (most likely) Not feasible
- 2-3 = Partially feasible
- 4-5 = Feasible

If the research plan is evaluated as (most likely) Not feasible, the academic quality will be evaluated as 0. If the feasibility is evaluated with a grade between 2-5, the academic quality will be evaluated with a grade on the scale 1-5.

The evaluators grade each application individually, without discussing the grades with other evaluators.
The grades are entered into the application portal, where an overall average points will be calculated for each applicant.
Based on the average points, a list in order of preference will be sent to the evaluators, who make a decision proposal for the research grants per faculty.
The final granting decision will be confirmed at a Graduate School meeting (prel. on April 18, 2025).

Granting decision will be published on this webpage when it is available (prel. April 21, 2025)

All applicants will be informed about the decision also via e-mail.

More details about the research grants are given by research coordinator Johanna Hedenborg