Homo Colossus application approved!

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Hooray! Our 3-year science + art + communication project, "From Homo Sapiens to Homo Colossus: Visualising our energy footprint" has been approved! I wrote a blog post about this application when we handed it in (back in April 2019).

That means I will work together with Mario Romero (KTH), Åsa Andersson Broms (Kungl. Konsthögskolan), Per Hasselberg (Konstfrämjandet) and Belinda Hellberg (Changency) between 2020-2022 on a very exciting project - and that we will meet regularly for the next three years!

The assessment (see above) was very positive ("this is, communication-wise, an exciting and innovative project with a clear strategy", "the project team has a very high competence" etc.) and the final assessment of the whole application/project was the best possible grade, "Outstanding" (one step above "Excellent"). The application was also deemed to be "Outstanding" in terms of "societal relevance" and it was deemed to be "Excellent" in terms of "research quality" and "communication efforts".

It's fair to say that we by now partly have "squandered" the seed money we got from KTH at the end of last year since we primarily have used that money for writing applications instead of doing what we were supposed to. We have basically and for the most part used the seed money (0.08 MSEK) to write two applications:
- We applied for money for a Small Visionary Project (0.3 MSEK) a month ago.
- We also applied for this now-approved Formas communication grant (1.9 MSEK) back in April.

Despite the fact that we are not on track to do what we were supposed to, I still think the seed money was money well spent by KTH. But I have to find a way to explain why we won't deliver what we were supposed to at the end of the year... Also, it certainly feels like we should spend the remaining money/time to start to plan for the new 3-year project rather than doing a rush job and delivering a sub-standard report at the end of the year.


Comment: This blog post was written at a later point in time and has been back-dated. I have later heard that our application got the highest grade of all the 10 applications that were approved.
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