The Legacy of European Social Psychology

An online compendium of ideas, schools and people in the field of Social Psychology

From Exchange Visits to Grants

The founders of the Association felt that the organization of ‘exchange visits’ was one of the ways to contribute towards setting up joint research projects and towards creating networks of social psychologists across Europe. Members were stimulated to submit proposals for such exchange visits that would be (partly) funded by the Association. What started as these ‘exchange visits’ gradually developed into what is now our well-structured grant scheme, although the present grant scheme covers more ground that the initial support for exchange visits.

As a whole, the evolution of the grants scheme is an excellent illustration of the way in which the Association responds to developing needs and tendencies. A reading of the reports by holders of these grants in the European Bulletin clearly shows that the money invested by the Association in the grant scheme is well spent.

Closest to the original exchange visits, are the present (and recently instated) full member travel grants, which pretty much like their early predecessor are intended for short visits by full members to departments elsewhere with the purpose of conducting new research, learning about new technologies and the like. A comparable type of travel grants is also available for postgraduate members. Seedcorn research grants serve to allow researchers to engage in preliminary research on which basis they may later be able to apply for larger scale funding. They can now also be obtained towards executing research designed at an EASP Summer School. It should be noted that this latter possibility was also already around at the time of the early Summer Schools. Aside from the above, there is a special category of grants, called the Research Knowledge Transfer Scheme (RKTS), meant as support for initiatives that can assist members from areas with only limited access to scientific information, facilities, or funding is available.

Finally and as the most recent addition to the schema there are the ‘pre-registered research grants’. They are meant to help researchers who have already received an in principal acceptance from a journal that publishes preregistered research.