Berlin University Alliance

Call for Funding // TD-Lab Funding Program of the Berlin University Alliance

July 1st, 2025

The TD-Lab – Laboratory for Transdisciplinary Research of the Berlin University Alliance is funding up to fifteen participatory and/or transdisciplinary supplementary work packages with up to €10,000 in material resources for the period from January 14, 2026 - July 15, 2026.

The call for funding is open from July 1 to September 30, 2025, 11:59 pm CEST.

As a society, we are facing challenges that research can help solve. In order to be able to address these current and future problems and to initiate social change through research, non-scientific actors and/or affected persons should already be involved in the research process, for example to think about potential use cases, to integrate practical knowledge into the knowledge process or to use the jointly produced, new knowledge in everyday practice.

The aim of the TD-Lab Funding Program is to increase the impact of current research projects by involving social actors in research with their practical perspectives and practical knowledge. Specifically, work packages are funded that strengthen the exchange of knowledge between science and society. The TD-Lab Funding Program thus offers the framework to apply for work packages in order to either a) incorporate participatory elements into one's own research or b) strengthen one's own participatory research.

The proposed work packages must target at least one of the three goals of the TD-Lab Funding Program:

• method-based knowledge exchange: strengthening method-based knowledge exchange and joint learning between science and practice

• scientific research interest: generating new impulses for transformation-oriented knowledge production to increase the societal benefit of research

• project development: initiating or deepening networks between science and practice to initiate joint participatory and/or transdisciplinary research projects

The proposal should make it clear how the participatory and/or transdisciplinary work packages complement the research project or how the partial results are integrated into the overall research process.

The following status groups of the four partners of the Berlin University Alliance are eligible to apply: professors, academic staff without a qualification position, postdocs and doctoral candidates, non-academic staff with scientific tasks.

The call for funding is basically open to all topics.

Online information events on the call in English:

• Monday, July 14, 2025, 2-3 pm, registration 
• Friday, August 20, 2025, 10-11 am, registration 
• Monday, 15 September 2025, 12-1 pm, registration

You can also find out about the different approaches to participatory research:

TD-Lab Training and Consulting – Participation Series - online

• September 8, 2025, 11 am - 12 pm, Introduction to Transdisciplinary Research (Dr. Ina Opitz, TD-Lab), registration
• September 9, 2025, 11 am - 12 pm, Introduction to Citizen Science (Dr. Carmen Siller, ZSI Vienna), registration
• September 10, 2025, 11 am - 12 pm, Introduction to Real-world Laboratories (Dr. Anja Steglich, StadtManufaktur TU Berlin), registration
• September 11, 2025, 11 am - 12 pm, Introduction to Responsible Research and Innovation (Julia Backhaus, RWTH Aachen University), registration

Download Call as pdf

Download FAQs

If you have any questions about the call for proposals, please contact:

Nadin Gaasch, Dr. Ina Opitz

program managers TD-Lab 

Phone: 030 838 522 98

E-mail: td-lab@berlin-university-alliance.de

Eleven projects were funded in the first funding round (January 15, 2025 to July 15, 2025). Information on these projects can be found here.