Although there are still uncertainties about the financial budgets to deal with these delays, we would like to repeat and update on the following.

If you work within an externally funded project (NWO, ERC, EU, etc), delays and damages have been reported in the Covid-questionnaires via Principal Investigators. AISSR has reserved budgets to cover these damages. Financing will become available if and when needed at the end of your project or contract. Your supervisor and / or PI can get in touch with the AISSR programme manager 4-5 months before the end date of contracts or projects, so that extensions can be realized where needed. If you are unsure about how your delays have been reported in the Covid questionnaire, please ask your supervisor or PI/ project leaders. If new delays are incurred in 2021, it remains possible to report these via the programme managers.

If you do not work within a project but are a ‘First money stream’ or ‘external PhD’ (including PhDs on a bursary/ scholarship), please continue to report your delays and concerns to your supervisors and programme group leaders. We are at the moment conducting a new inventory of project delays via programme group leaders. (Modest) budgets are available to cover damages and support projects in need.

If you need support in other ways (for example an extension of the deadline of the 8-month paper) you can contact PhD coordinator Lotte Batelaan. If you are in need of necessities for your home office, you can request this at the departmental secretariats.

In many cases, it is important to continue looking for alternatives, and to rethink, together with your supervisory team,  your research methods and design in creative ways. In some cases, it is just not viable to keep pushing fieldwork forward, as the shape of post-Corona travel is still very uncertain. We know that this redesigning is already happening in positive and creative ways across many projects.

Finally, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us (Marieke de Goede and/or Lotte Batelaan) directly in urgent cases of need.

For questions about this message or these procedures, please contact Marieke de Goede, or members of the AISSR Covid committee (Ursula Daxecker, Rivke Jaffe, Don Weenink, Laurens Bakker, Patrick Brown).

Very best wishes,

Marieke de Goede & Lotte Batelaan