Direção de Projectos (DP)

FCT-Tenure is a new FCT funding instrument for stabilizing researchers in career positions. Designed to promote the hiring of PhD researchers exclusively for permanent positions, it will run every two years and two editions have already been planned. The current edition of this program provides for the opening of up to 1000 positions, with an additional 400 positions expected to be opened in the 2025 edition. FCT-Tenure is a central instrument in the professional stabilization of researchers and their lines of research, as well as in the creation of a more attractive and sustainable career horizon for researchers in the early stages of their careers.

Eligible institutions are those in the National Science and Technology System (SNCT), which may submit applications to co-finance positions associated with new Calls career posts. It will then be up to the beneficiary institutions, through Calls and in accordance with the scientific and innovation strategy submitted for evaluation, to select and recruit doctoral graduates.

The program will allow doctoral graduates to be integrated into both research and teaching careers, assuming a limit of 4 hours per week of dedication to teaching in each career for as long as the support is in place. In this way, both careers are seen for the scientific research activities they have in common and, at the same time, an important level of autonomy is provided in the management of career positions within the framework of each institution’s strategic planning.

FCT-Tenure will be implemented on a co-funding basis for a maximum period of 3 years for each post awarded in the teaching career, and up to a maximum of 6 years for each post awarded in the research career. Two thirds of the salary costs will be co-funded in the first 3 years for both careers and one third in the second three years (if the hiring is done in the research career or equivalent). The co-financing will apply to the salary costs of any category in which the researcher is hired, making it possible to hire each researcher in the category that best suits their profile and career path.

The design of this program shares the general guidelines that shape new programs already launched by the FCT, namely the promotion of more mobility and flexibility in research, understood as inter-institutional, intersectoral and inter-career (research and teaching), but also interdisciplinary and collaborative. In this way, bottom-up logics and dynamics are valued which, by rejecting one-size-fits-all solutions, allow the scientific community and institutions more agile conditions for adapting to and taking advantage of the diversity and creativity of increasingly diverse and collaborative disciplinary contexts and knowledge production structures.

In order to promote financial and strategic synergies between the FCT-Tenure program and other institutions, intersectoral partnerships will be considered, as well as the sharing of responsibilities and scientific objectives between different institutions and entities. In these cases, each position proposed for evaluation may be flagged and subsequently publicized as a “Research Unit” Chair or a “Non-Academic” Chair.

FCT-Tenure, in addition to benefiting from the State Budget, is funded by the PRR’s Science Plus Capacity Building Measure, consolidating the PRR’s vision as an instrument for the country’s structural transformation.

Details of the 2023 Call can be found on the FCT website.

FCT News