In October 2013, a consortium of major funders of social sciences and humanities research joined forces to launch the Trans-Atlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities (T-AP). The funders came from three continents—North America, South America and Europe—and set up T-AP with the prime objective of facilitating transatlantic research collaboration among researchers, funders and other stakeholders.
Thus far, T-AP activities have revolved around the scoping work needed to move forward with its international research cooperation agenda, among which are learning about the various funding models and processes T-AP members use, what their peer review systems are like, and how they finance awards.
T-AP has also undertaken an inventory of the transatlantic research projects being undertaken by the various partners, and is in the process of reaching out to the principal investigators of these projects to document and share best practices – and to learn how any challenges have been overcome.
Importantly, T-AP has also mapped out the thematic priorities of the 16 funding agencies thus far involved in the Platform. This exercise has led to the identification of three key priority areas for future cooperation: Diversity, inequality and differences; Resilient and innovative societies; and New (path)ways of doing research. These themes complement T-AP’s long-standing focus on digital scholarship.
This background work supports the Platform’s mandate of facilitating international research co-operation. It also feeds into one of its key activities: a pilot funding program in digital scholarship, which T-AP is pursuing in collaboration with Digging into Data and plans to launch in 2016. This pilot will lay the groundwork for future joint programs.
The Trans-Atlantic Platform invites Congress attendees and the general public to three SSHRC-hosted workshops on June 1. The purpose of the workshops is to stimulate networking and engage researchers and other stakeholders on establishing research agendas in T-AP’s thematic priority areas. More information about these workshops is available on the T-AP website.
To find out more about the Trans-Atlantic Platform, contact Jeremy Geelen at jeremy.geelen@sshrc-crsh.gc.ca.