Who is NORFACE?

New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe (NORFACE) is a partnership of national research funding agencies in Europe dedicated to leading and developing opportunities for scientists in the area of social and behavioural sciences.

NORFACE plays an important part in responding to the grand societal challenges by promoting research of the highest quality, sharing best practices among research funders and especially by making international collaboration between social scientists in Europe possible. From challenges brought on by migration and inequality to preparing for the impact of an aging society, researchers in the social sciences in Europe are looking at the behaviour of individuals and groups, and the dynamics of institutions and societies within Europe to understand and address these societal challenges.

What is DIAL?

Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course: structures and processes (DIAL) is the fourth major transnational research programme of NORFACE. The European Commission is providing top-up funding via an ERA-NET Cofund grant to this joint research programme.

The DIAL programme has three major objectives:

• To advance globally excellent theoretical and methodological research on dynamics of inequality across the life-course which may be multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and comparative, and which builds synergistically on a pan-European basis;
• To motivate and support excellence and capacity building for research on dynamics of inequality across the life-course on a cross-national basis throughout the NORFACE countries;
• To develop understanding and promote research-based knowledge and insight into dynamics of inequality across the life-course for issues of societal, practical and policy relevance, with theoretical foundations but worked on jointly with relevant users and experts.