HEAS Seed Grants
Our HEAS Seed Grant initiative will support pilot projects that will induce more collaborative work in our network. We want to keep it simple and unbureaucratic.
Applications for the HEAS Seed Grants will be accepted three times a year. The deadlines for 2025 are 28th February, 30th June and 31st October. Applications are open to all HEAS PhDs, Postdocs, and PIs. Each seed grant will be for a sum up to € 3,000. There will be a minimum of three Seed Grants offered each time.
You may submit up to two submissions if:
- You don’t already have an active HEAS Seed Grant from a previous round
- You are not the lead on both (i.e. you can be a lead on one and a collabarator on another)
Proposals will be evaluated by all members of the HEAS Management Board, the best three proposals will be funded. Grantees will be announced in the NEWS Section of the HEAS website.
Guidelines
The short proposals should have:
- 1 or 2 pages maximum, provide a summary of what will be done, what the target of the pilot project is (e.g., preparation for grant applications, proof of concept, etc.), and particularly should make clear the bridging aspect of the intended interdisciplinary work in the framework of HEAS.
- Budget: Please include a breakdown of items in the budget part of the proposal, e.g. “110 samples sequencing à € 15.00 = €1650.00, 67.5h lab technician @ € 20.00 = €1350.00”.
- Please also include a short CV of 1-3 pages which includes relevant prior work.
The whole proposal should still not exceed 2 pages + references + CV. The budget outline should be included in the 2 pages, no formal quotes are required.
Reporting
When the project is complete a report of no more than 8 pages, including a brief financial report, should be submitted. Successful applicants are also encouraged to present a Pecha Kucha at the end of the project.
HEAS Members
If you would like more information about the grants or would like to submit a proposal, please contact Maeve
Funded projects
February 2025
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Michaela Schauer, Georg Tiefengraber | February 2025 | AI-Assisted Full-Spectrum p-XRF Analysis: A New Approach to Decoding Graphite Provenance | 3000 |
| Leslie Quade, Laura van der Sluis, Manasij Pal Chowdhury, Thomas Köcher | February 2025 | Refining dentine extraction methods for detecting metabolites indicative of tobacco use in archaeological teeth | 3000 |
| Sojung Han, Ron Pinhasi, Andreas G. Heiss | February 2025 | Genetic Excavation of Pathogens: Insights from the Bürgerspital Cesspit (17th-18th Century Vienna) | 3000 |
October 2024
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Barbara Horejs, Magdalena Blanz, Maddalena Gianni, Laura van der Sluis | October 2024 | Optimising bone collagen extraction protocols for stable isotope ratio analysis for animal bones from Çukuriçi Höyük and Svinjarička Čuka | 3000 |
| Mareike Stahlschmidt, Susanna Sawyer, Viola Schmid | October 2024 | Micromorphological and sedaDNA analysis at the Middle and Later Stone Age site of Rose Cottage Cave, South Africa | 3000 |
| Stefan Krojer Immo Trinks. | October 2024 | High-resolution underwater archaeological photogrammetric 3D documentation of the entire UNESCO World Heritage component part See, Lake Mondsee. | 3000 |
June 2024
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Laura van der Sluis, Peter Steier, Martin Street | June 2024 | Refining pretreatment chemistry approaches to improve the dating of highly contaminated archaeological bone: The case of the Late Glacial Miesenheim site, Germany. | 3000 |
| Manasij Pal Chowdhury, Georg Tiefengraber | June 2024 | Optimisation of extraction protocol for analysis of ceramic-bound proteins from modern and archaeological pottery | 2970 |
| Pere Gelabert, Manasij Pal Chowdhury | June 2024 | Correspondance between sedaDNA and Paleproteines in the Late Pleistocene in Patagonia | 3000 |
February 2024
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Bühler, Kirchengast, Kornfeind and Exel. | February 2024 | Rider muscle activity in horseback archery: A comparative, transdisciplinary approach to different “horse-riding styles | 2992 |
| Susanna Sawyer, Florian Exler and Thomas Beard | February 2024 | Developing nanopore sequencing for ancient DNA | 3000 |
| José-Miguel Tejero, Susanna Sawyer, Jürgen Kriwett | February 2024 | Testing minimally invasive aDNA extraction methods | 3000 |
October 2023
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Dominik Hagmann, Barbara Borgers | October 2023 | Comprehensive Analysis of Pottery Composition from Traismauer/Augustianis: Rethinking Roman Trade Networks | € 2.986,00 |
| Mareike Stahlschmidt, Katerina Douka, Thomas Beard | October 2023 | Collagen-based taxonomic identification of bones preserved in resin impregnated sediment blocks | € 2.590,00 |
| Magdalena Blanz, Günther Grabner, Karin Wiltschke-Schrotta, and Alexandra Krenn-Leeb | October 2023 | Diet and Subsistence in the Lower Austrian Early Bronze Age – A bioarchaeological view through C and N stable isotope ratios on selected find complexes of the Wieselburg/Gáta, Unterwölbling and Únětice cultures | € 3.000,00 |
| Michelle Hämmerle, José-Miguel Tejero, Olivia Cheronet | October 2023 | Development of a bioinformatics tool to assess aDNA preservation from pooled extracts | € 3.000,00 |
| Mathias Mehofer, Laura Dietrich | October 2023 | Metal exchange networks and hoard biographies in Late Bronze Age Romania – First archaeometallurgical studies on the metal hoard from Bandul de Câmpie, jud. Mures. |
€ 2.974,50 |
| Lumila Menéndez, Katerina Douka, Tom Higham | October 2023 | Applying Zooms And 14c For Studying Human-Canid Interactions In Ancient South America | € 3.000,00 |
June 2023
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Susanna Sawyer, Pere Gelabert, Mareike Stahlschmidt | June 2023 | Tissue source determination of ancient DNA in sediment | €3.000,00 |
| Laura van der Sluis, Georg Tiefengraber | June 2023 | Early Bronze Age clothing bone pins from the Natural History Museum archive | €3.000,00 |
| Tom Higham, Emese Végh | June 2023 | HUMEVCOL – Human Evolution Beyond Collagen | €2.955,47 |
February 2023
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount Granted |
| Victoria Oberreiter and Florian Exler | February 2023 | Analyzing Altamira: The first aDNA analyses of the renowned cave paintings from northern Spain | €3.000,00 |
| Annette Oertle, Katerina Douka, Frank Zachos | February 2023 | Using museum collections for ZooMS marker development of New Guinea taxa | €3.000,00 |
| Dominik Hagmann, Sylvia Kirchengast | February 2023 | Undiscovered Ancient Deathscapes“: Archaeothanatological Analysis Of Roman and Early Medieval Inhumations from Cemeteries in the Southeastern Upper Danube River Basin (sUDRB) during the Roman Climate Optimum (RCO) and Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA) | €3.000,00 |
| Olivia Cheronet, Maria Teschler-Nicola, Daniel Fernandes, Adrian Daly | February 2023 | Confirmation of the presence of Mucopolysaccharidosis in the Medieval population of Pottenbrunn (Lower Austria) | €3.000,00 |
| Richard Kimber, Susanna Sawyer,Florian Exler | February 2023 | A density separation approach for improved ancient DNA yields from sediments | €3.000,00 |
September 2022
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount granted |
| Laura van der Sluis (DEA), Karina Groemer (NHM), Christine Lefèvre & Dr. Sophie Cersoy (NMHM), Stephan Krämer (EDGE), Annette Oertle (DEA)
|
30th September 2022 | Developing methods for the identification of glues and consolidants in museum collections: a Pilot Project | €2.800,00 |
| Meriam Guellil, Pere Gelabert and Ron Pinhasi (DEA) | 30th September 2022 | Exploring the Narrenturm Pathological Collection | €3.000,00 |
| Brina Zagorc and Magdalena Blanz | 30th September 2022 | Health and diet intertwined: co-analysing genetic markers with dietary stable isotopes ofsubadults from Roman and Early Medieval Croatia | €3.000,00 |
March 2022
| Applicant | Round | Project | Amount granted |
| Emily J. Kate | 31st March 2022 | The Authority of the Feast: A Comparative Approach to Studying Feasting in Chiefly Societies | € 3.000,00 |
| Pere Gelabert, José-Miguel Tejero | 31st March 2022 | Assessing the differential DNA preservation in Palaeolithic sediments and osseous tools from museum collections | € 3.000,00 |
| Xin Huang | 31st March 2022 | dbHAP: A database for understanding and visualizing genomic diversity with human ancestral populations | € 2.840,00 |
| Barbara Horejs | 31st March 2022 | ‘Pilot study Starčevo hut’ A new micro-archaeological approach for understanding stages of sedentism in the Balkan Neolithization process | € 3.000,00 |