Royal Swedish Academy of Music – Music research grants (deadlines Mar/Oct)

This is research money rather than production money. It pays for the small, awkward costs that sit around a music research project: getting to a conference where your paper has been accepted, attending a workshop or seminar as an active participant, travelling to an archive, collecting data, running interviews. Artistic research in music counts, alongside music education research, musicology and music-related work in other disciplines — so a performer pursuing a practice-based doctorate is as eligible as a historian.

Applicants can be master's students working towards a thesis, doctoral candidates, or working researchers inside or outside the university system. What it will not fund is telling: nothing that has already happened before the deadline, no lost income, no salaries or per diems, no tuition, no printing or publishing, no equipment or books, and no digital or media production.

Awards are typically between SEK 1,500 and 20,000. The Academy expects to be one of several funders and openly encourages you to apply elsewhere in parallel; travel budgets must use the cheapest option, with trains preferred.

There is no form. You email a single PDF: a description of up to four pages explaining the purpose and why it matters to your research, a one-page CV, a cost breakdown showing what your institution covers, and — depending on your situation — a supervisor's letter of support, your current individual study plan, and confirmation that your conference paper was accepted. Deadlines are 1 March and 1 October; late applications roll to the next round. The pages and the application are in Swedish. Recipients report back with receipts within six months.