News

One of the novelties of the Horizon 2020 programme (H2020) is the systematic and strategic integration of the social sciences and humanities into each of its priorities. Contributions from these disciplines are needed to generate new knowledge, support evidence-based policymaking, develop key competences and produce interdisciplinary solutions to both societal and technological issues.

Net4Society, the international network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for Societal Challenge 6 in Horizon 2020, has published a guiding document “Opportunities for Researchers from the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Horizon 2020”, which includes topics from the 2018-2020 Work Programmes of all ‘Societal Challenges’ - as well as topics from the H2020 programme parts ‘Industrial Leadership’ and ‘Excellent Science’ relevant to the SSH community (i.e. topics that explicitly invite contributions from the Social Sciences and Humanities). Topics with some minor SSH relevance are also mentioned, but they are not fully outlined. For each call or topic, the corresponding links are provided.

Proposals submitted to topics flagged for SSH are expected to take into account the social, economic, behavioural, institutional, historical and/or cultural dimensions, as appropriate, of a societal issue. Applicants are expected to ensure that contributions from the SSH are integrated at various stages of their proposals and that the actions required, the participants and the disciplines involved, as well as the added value of the SSH contributions are clearly stated.

The list of topics for Social Sciences and Humanities in WP 2018-2020 can also be easily found in the Participant Portal.

For additional information regarding the integration of SSH disciplines into projects, please consult the monitoring report “Integration of Social Sciences and Humanities in Horizon 2020”, focussed on projects funded in 2015 under the ‘Societal Challenges’ and ‘Industrial Leadership’ priorities, which illustrates the progress of the new policy on the integration of SSH as a cross-cutting issue and points out to areas where further efforts for SSH integration are still needed.