How the 2023 funding year turned out

82 per cent of the Swedish Research Council’s funding went to undirected project grants, which are research projects where the researchers themselves have formulated the research questions and developed methods for answering these.

The targeted initiatives increased slightly compared to previous years. We have, for example, issued calls for grants under the new national research programmes in criminality, segregation, the societal consequences of digitisation, and also viruses and pandemics, which the Government set up to address some of today’s societal challenges.

“To manage complex societal challenges, a strong knowledge foundation is required, based on undirected researcher-initiated research. The targeted initiatives are a complement to the undirected researcher-initiated research, but they need to have a long-term perspective, be based on fields where there is sufficiently strong research, and be developed in dialogue with the research community,” says Katarina Bjelke, Director General of the Swedish Research Council.

In addition to research grants, the Swedish Research Council has funded research infrastructure to the sum of around 3 billion SEK. The funding has gone to national infrastructures and to memberships of international research infrastructure.

*An additional 258 applications for reseatch grants within development research were submitted but were dismissed following the Government’s decision to no longer fund research in this area."