As of today, SCAS is welcoming another CAT group for a week-long stay at the Collegium.

The group – consisting of Hampus Östh Gustafsson (PI; Uppsala University), Tobias Dalberg (Uppsala University), Audrey Harroche (Oxford Brooks Business School/Sciences Po), François van Schalkwyk (Stellenbosch University) and Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt (Ghent University) – is working on the project Freedom to Research: Shifting Funding Regimes and their Effects on Early-Career Academics in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Östh Gustafsson and his team describe their project as follows:

“Threats to academic freedom have emerged globally and are increasingly cause for concern among scholars. Pivotal to any discussion about academic freedom is the role of research funding. Funding protects and sustains freedoms in the pursuit of knowledge creation (research) and dissemination (teaching). However, there is limited understanding of how variations in historically and geographically distinct funding regimes impact early-career academics, particularly in the Social Sciences and Humanities. This CAT group addresses this question. The group comprises sociologists and historians committed to advocating for a positive definition of academic freedom.

Our collective work spans France, Sweden, the UK, and South Africa, thus also offering a Global South perspective, and covers over five decades, from the 1970s to the present. Methodologically, we employ a broad empirical mix based on of archival research, interviews, expert focus groups, and statistical analyses of various data sources. Our overarching goal is to explore how funding regimes influence career trajectories and the freedoms of emerging scholars, while also examining how they adapt to or challenge constraints. Ultimately, we aim to: (i) contribute to and lead debates on the reevaluation of current funding models to promote more equitable and sustainable academic environments, (ii) inform policy discussions on responsible research assessment and funding, and (iii) propose strategies to enhance the autonomy and creative potential of early-career academics in the Social Sciences and Humanities.”

In addition to the stay at SCAS, the group will also spend time in residence at the Collegium’s sister institutes in Konstanz, Freiburg, Paris and Oslo.

The Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme External link. is an initiative of the Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS). It gives outstanding early-career researchers the opportunity to focus on basic research dedicated to the development of new ideas to understand and address current or emerging societal challenges. It also aims at supporting the transformation of these ideas into real-world action and to foster networks of advanced thinking. An important feature of the programme is short-term visits to different Institutes for Advanced Study (IAS) where the scholars meet with Fellows in residence at the institutes, as well as local research communities.