$457 juta perkukuh penyelidikan sains sosial, kemanusiaan di SG

Reports noted that Min/MOE Chan Chun Sing announced on 21/9 at the second day of the Singaporean Researchers Global Summit held at NTU, that a total of $457 million had been set aside to strengthen social science and humanities research in Singapore over the next five years from FY2021 to FY2025. The increase of about 30 per cent from the $350 million previously set aside from FY2015 to FY2020 aimed to boost support for young Singaporean researchers with promising careers and efforts to build a vibrant social science and humanities research ecosystem in Singapore. From 2016 to 2020, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) had awarded funding to a total of 37 projects under the Social Science Research Thematic Grant (SSRTG), spanning a variety of topics that were salient to Singapore's socio-economic challenges, including projects which studied raising productivity levels in the service sector, understanding how low-income families adapt to their environments and fostering harmonious inter-group relations in early childhood. Min Chan also announced a new SSRC Graduate Research Fellowship which would start in 2022, targeted at Singaporeans pursuing their PhDs or post-doctorate stints overseas. The Fellowship would provide a grant of up to $10,000 for PhD students, and $20,000 for post-doctorate fellows, and each award is tenable for two years. ZB also noted that SSRC rolled out the Social Science and Humanities Research Fellowship in 2018 and awarded seven Fellows from 2018 to 2020.

ST, ZB and TNP featured Dr Anne Rifkin-Graboi, Senior Lecturer (Research Scientist) at the NIE in NTU, a recipient of the SSRTG in 2020, and her ongoing project looking at the impact of COVID-19 on early childhood development and family functioning.

Source: Berita Harian © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Permission required for reproduction.