High-ranking RGNF delegation visits Bonn
Russian delegation received by DFG President Peter Strohschneider
(25.03.14) At the end of February, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) played host to a high-ranking delegation from its partner organisation RGNF, the Russian Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in Bonn. The Russian delegates met with the Executive Board and representatives of various divisions at the DFG's Head Office to deepen institutional relations between the two funding organisations.
Led by the chair of the RGNF's Scientific Council, Vladimir N. Fridlyanov, the Russian delegation met with DFG President Peter Strohschneider, Annette Schmidtmann (Head of Research Careers Division), Anne Lipp (Head of Scientific Library Services and Information Systems Division) and Jörg Schneider (Head of International Affairs Division) to discuss various ways of expanding the institutional cooperation. The main purpose of the visit was to meet the DFG's specialist group for humanities and social sciences, and particularly to discuss the resumption of joint calls for proposals for German-Russian research projects. Fridlyanov, a former deputy economics minister of Russia, highlighted the importance of the collaboration between the RGNF and the DFG, the German organisation currently being the only organisation to enable the joint funding of bilateral projects between Russia and Germany in the humanities and social sciences.
The Russian Foundation for Basic Research was established in 1994 in accordance with the principles of academic self-governance. The Scientific Council, its highest body, is made up of 26 respected academics, representatives of the Academies of Sciences and leading universities, and senior ministry officials. The foundation operates funding programmes for scientific projects and publications as well as conferences and seminars. It also supports scientific information systems and field research. In 2014 the RGNF was allocated a budget of around RUR1.5billion to award to Russian researchers in an open, competitive, proposal-based system. The organisation has funding agreements with international partners such as the CNRS in France and the DFG in Germany.