Collaborative Project to Prevent and Combat Violence in Close Relationships

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. 

If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

You must have an approved doctoral degree or achieved associate professor qualifications before the application deadline. For the purposes of this call, being or having been employed as researcher 1, researcher 2 or senior researcher in the institute sector is considered to be associate professor competence. 

The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the partners. 

Requirements relating to partners 

The project must be carried out by one or more research organisations in effective collaboration with relevant actors in the public sector, non-governmental organisations and/or other organisations. In this context, an enterprise is anyone who engages in economic activity, i.e. that offers goods or services in a market. 

• The project must have at least two Norwegian partners that are not research organisations (see the guidelines for definition). These will be societal actors who contribute expertise and experience and ensure that the project and its objectives address real challenges in society.  
• The social actors must participate actively in the project. We require that a minimum of 10 percent of the project's total costs must be consumed by these actors. In the guidelines, we refer to this as the "participation requirement". 
• The project must be carried out in actual collaboration, which means that all partners must actively contribute to the planning and follow-up of the project. Everyone must also contribute to disseminating results and ensuring that new knowledge is put to use. 
• The project must be strategically anchored with all the partners. You must confirm this in the letters of intent. See information about what the letter of intent must include under Practical information (below). 
• The project must include a steering group or a reference group in which the partners who represent the societal challenge are represented. 
• Their research should not be commissioned research. 
• In the application, you must describe how the expertise you build up in the project can benefit larger user groups. 

One and the same party may not have several roles in the project, for example as Project Owner and partner or as a subcontractor in the same project. 

You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong. 

The following cost types should be used: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses, which are costs related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions and the project manager's position) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral scholarships, the support is limited to three full-time equivalents. For postdoctoral fellowships, the support is limited to a maximum of three years. See our website about postdoctoral research fellowship positions and doctoral research fellowship positions.  
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here. All expenses you enter as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.    
• Equipment, which are costs that include operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary to carry out the project.  

The item Procurement of R&D services must not be used.  

If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are specific plans for research stays abroad for these, this may be included in the application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Research Fellows. Here, the project manager can apply for funding for research stays abroad for research fellows participating in the project during the project period.  Please note that the separate call for proposals sets out a number of requirements regarding who is eligible for support for the stay abroad  

If there are specific plans for visiting researchers or stays abroad for doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows or researchers in the project, this may be included in the application. The rules for such stays and information about rates can be found on the budget information page (see link below). 

You can find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on the website. 

Costs of foreign partners 

The Research Council's allocation may cover the costs of the foreign research organisations. See Budgeting costs for partners abroad.   

We cannot cover costs with other foreign partners. These costs must therefore be kept out of the budget tables. However, you must mention the activities they will carry out, as well as their costs, in the project description. 

Scope of support 

This call is eligible for funding of NOK 10 million per project. We do not require own financing, but for the higher education sector, we do require some own financing of researcher time. 

Conditions for funding 

The projects must start between 1 April 2026 and 1 October 2026. The latest permitted project completion is 30 September 2029. 

Companies are not eligible to receive funding to cover project costs. 

Ethics 

The Research Council requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund, and ethics is included in the assessment criterion for Research Quality. In the template for the project description, there is a separate section that deals with this. The description of ethics is first and foremost an assurance to the peers that there is a plan in place to deal with the most important ethical dilemmas in the project. If you need to describe this in more detail, this can be done elsewhere in the project description, for example under method selection, or you can do so in the data management plan(s) (see below). 

The responsibility for ensuring that the research ethics standard is followed lies with the individual researcher and research institution (cf. the Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics Work). The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision regarding funding do not entail any approval of research ethics. 

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive funding from us: 

• The Research Council's conditions for funding can also be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects on the information page What the contract involves.  
• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and handled the consideration of research security in the project. Research security refers to risks associated with unwanted transfer of knowledge and technology, impact on research and innovation, or breaches of research ethics/integrity where knowledge and technology are used to undermine key societal values.  
• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. This must be in place before the contract is signed for projects with grants from us. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups or the voluntary sector.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application. Here you will find more information about requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results.  

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for the project manager and for the most important project participants. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. You will assess which project participants are the most important, and in which cases it will be of importance for the application processing to assess the project participants' qualifications. Key project participants who are researchers can use the CV template called "Template for CV researchers". Other key project participants can use the CV template called "Template for CV". 
• Letters of intent from all registered partners that are research organisations. 
• Letters of intent from all registered partners who contribute from a societal perspective. 
• Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. When describing the application's relevance, we recommend that you read the relevant topic text carefully. Uploaded as attachment type "Other". 

Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. 

Optional attachments 

• If you wish, you can attach a brief description of competence or suggestions for up to three peers you believe will be suitable to assess your application. We are not obliged to use the proposals, but can do so if necessary. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

We will assess the application as it has been submitted. 

Once the application deadline has passed, we will first check that all formal requirements are met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. 

The Research Council may reject applications where the Project Owner or partner has materially breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council in the two years prior to the submission of the application. 

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been appointed to the Joint Integrity Committee or the Investigation Committee in the last two years prior to the submission of the application. 

Where the requirements are met, we will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available in an online portal for peers who individually assess the criteria "Research quality", "Impacts and effects" and "Implementation". The referees then meet in panels where they arrive at a consensus assessment of the application for each of the three criteria. 

If the panel assesses all the criteria for a mark of 4 or higher, the application will be eligible for funding, and the application will also be assessed on the basis of the criterion "Relevance to the call" by Research Council case officers. The results of the assessment of the four criteria mentioned above are summarised in an overall mark as an overall expression of the quality of the application. 

The administration then writes a recommendation with recommendations to the portfolio board for Democracy and Global Development. The portfolio board uses the panel's assessment, the relevance assessment and an overall portfolio assessment for its decision. 

See also: How we process applications.   

We expect to publish which applications will be funded in March 2026.