PROGRAM OVERVIEW:
Centering plural, accountable, and historically grounded forms of inquiry is a core commitment of the Max Planck–NTU Singapore Centre for Biocultural Worlding. We invite proposals for collaborative activities that advance this commitment in concrete and innovative ways.
CBCW seeks projects that demonstrate:
– collaborative efforts that bring biocultural worlding into practice;
– biocultural thought and practice that make itself publicly relevant through interactive, multimodal, and participatory formats;
– research approaches that integrate ecological, historical, legal, artistic, and ancestral or intergenerational community perspectives;
– rigorous, plural collaboration across expertise domains that generate substantive and transformative insights into changing social and natural ecosystems;
– diverse formats exploring interdependence, relationality, ancestral or intergenerational modes of being, knowing, and doing, and plural temporalities to move beyond problem identification and to engage directly with grounded forms of knowledge production and practice.
Budget: 10,000 € maximum
WHO CAN APPLY:
– Knowledge-holders, curators, artists, legal scholars, scientists, and researchers of age 21 or older by the deadline.
– Individuals may apply independently or in collaboration; partnerships with organizations are permitted, but organizations cannot apply or serve as the lead applicant.
– Applicants must not be enrolled in a degree-seeking program of any kind during the grant period (July 2026 to December 2026).
– Applicants are encouraged to consult with a member of the CBCW Board of Advisors or Leadership Team in advance of submission.
– Applicants must not be a member of the CBCW Board of Advisors, the MPIWG Board of Advisors, NTU Board of Trustees, and/or an immediate family member of any of the above.
CRITERIA:
The evaluation process will review proposals that clearly demonstrate:
– Alignment with CBCW’s mission and vision.
– Brings together artistic practice, legal inquiry, and/or ecological, historical, and situated forms of knowledge production to conduct integrative collaborative research.
– Meaningful engagement with knowledge-holding communities, demonstrating co-creative roles rather than consultative inclusion.
– A clearly defined thematic and conceptual focus in questions of interdependence, relationality, or intergenerational knowledge.
– Contextual grounding, specifying the empirical, historical, or conceptual contexts of the project.
– Innovative or experimental multimodal formats that develop and share analytical biocultural thinking beyond academia.
– Originality, demonstrating that the project described in the application is newly conceived and requires cross-disciplinary and community collaboration.
– Ethics and data protection protocols, where applicable.
– Inclusion of at least one collaborator from NTU College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and one from the MPI for the History of Science or MPI for Innovation and Competition in the team.
APPLICATION GUIDELINES:
Applications must be submitted in English, using the form provided below. Each application should be compiled as a single file (Word document or PDF) and named according to the following format: 2026_Smith_Sally.doc (e.g., if your family name is Smith and given name is Sally)
What to submit (space provided in form):
– Title (max. 25 words)
– Abstract/Summary (max. 500 words)
– Keywords (4-6)
– Project Location
– Project Timeline
– Lead Applicant Contact Details
– Artist/Collaborator Information (including roles of core team members)
– Qualifications of project lead and core team members (max. 500 words)
– Budget (max. 10,000 Euros)
– Impact/Target Audience (max. 250 words)
– Additional Forms of Community Support (e.g., in-kind contributions)
– Supplementary Materials (optional): letters of commitment or interest, permits for public spaces.
– Checklist of Criteria (as outlined above)
Click HERE to download the submission form.
Upload submission to this folder: https://wg-cloud.gnz.mpg.de/s/zcTPcbomJRL6nrx
For questions, please contact: msaidul@ntu.edu.sg or lonaga@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de.
WHO ARE WE
Co-Directors
Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Acting Director, NTU CCA Singapore and Professor, NTU College of Humanities Arts & Social Sciences
Professor Dagmar Schäfer, Director, Department Artifacts, Action, Knowledge, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Co-Deputy Directors
Dr Md Saidul Islam, Associate Professor, NTU School of Social Sciences
Dr Lisa Onaga, Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Scientific Coordinators
Mei Jia Ng
Suelyn Tarris
International Advisory Board
Professor Nabil Ahmed, Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Emeritus Professor Chua Beng Huat, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Professor Susy Frankel, Lead Director, New Zealand Centre of International Economic Law, Te Herenga Waka · Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Han Song Hiltmann, Programme Director, Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss, Germany
Professor Gabriela Soto-Laveaga, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, United States
Marian Pastor Roces, Independent curator, cultural critic, policy analyst, and founder, TAOINC, Philippines
Professor Daniel Robinson, School of Humanities & Language, University of New South Wales, Australia
Dr Julia Voss, Art historian, art critic, and curator, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Germany
