The Hasselblad Foundation is offering a stipend for a natural scientist to spend November and December at Hôtel Chevillon in the village of Grez-sur-Loing in France. The purpose is to offer a stay abroad for a limited period that can offer peace and quiet to enable concentration on a piece of writing.

Hôtel Chevillon and Grez-sur-Loing
Hôtel Chevillon has gone down in the history of Nordic art as one of the two hotels in Grez-sur-Loing which in the 1880s welcomed among their guests many people who were later to become famous Nordic and Anglo-Saxon artists and writers. They included Carl Larsson, Karl Nordström, Bruno Liljefors, the Danish and Norwegian Skagen painters, August Strindberg and Robert Louis Stevenson, to mention but a few. In this carefully restored setting, the Göteborg-based Grez-sur-Loing Foundation now rents apartments and studios to institutions so that they, in turn, can offer stipends to enable artists, writers, photographers, scientists and others to live and work in the area for a number of months (www.grez-stiftelsen.se). Hôtel Chevillon is not a hotel in the normal meaning of the term and the accommodation offered is self-catering. Hôtel Chevillon does not offer facilities for the disabled.

Grez-sur-Loing is situated about 70 kilometres south of Paris and 9 kilometres south of Fontainebleu. The village has about 1300 inhabitants. Few changes have been made over the last century to the village centre with its narrow, winding streets and dense housing. Notable sights are the ancient arched bridge and the time-honoured ruins of the tower.

The stipend will amount to SEK 30,000 and the foundation will also pay the rental cost for the accommodation.

Martin T. Sykes, Professor in Plant Ecology, Department of Physical Geography & Ecosystem Science at Lund University, has been awarded the 2012 stipend in Grez-sur-Loing for natural scientists.

The Foundation cites the following in its award motivation

Professor Sykes intends to complete a book with the provisional title Models confront the past: understanding millennial ecosystem dynamics. The book, which is aimed at senior students and researchers explores human and natural impacts on ecosystems over the last 10,000 years and into the future, with emphasis on modeling, data-model comparisons, global change and ecosystem services.  He is writing the book together with Professor Richard Bradshaw from the University of Liverpool. The Foundation’s assessment is that the subject is urgent and that the quiet environment in Grez-sur-Loing provides the opportunity for Professor Sykes to concentrate and complete this important project.

The purpose of this stipend is to offer a stay at Hôtel Chevillon in Grez-sur-Loing, France during November and December to enable concentration on a piece of writing in a peaceful and quiet environment. The stipend will amount to SEK 30,000 and the Foundation also pays the rental cost for the accommodation.

Eligibility
Applications for this stipend can be accepted from natural scientists who are active as teachers/researchers at Universities in Sweden.

Application
Applications listing the applicant's personal details and the post held should be submitted with a brief CV and a description (justification) of the purpose of the stay. There are no specific application forms.
Applications (electronic) must be submitted to the Hasselblad Foundation no later than May 15 the year of application, in the form of a single, merged document (a PDF file). Address: stipendium@hasselbladfoundation.org

Period
November - December

Amount
The stipend amounts to SEK 30,000 and the foundation also pays the rental cost for the accommodation. During the period of the stipend, the holder may also be accompanied by a member of her or his family at no extra charge.

The holder of the stipend must provide her or his own computer for the period. A central Internet connection and printer are provided at Hôtel Chevillon.

Notification
The Hasselblad Foundation will announce who has been awarded the stipend in June the year of application in a press release and through publication on the website.

Previous Recipients of the writing stipend:

2011: Marek Abramowicz, Professor vid Institutionen för Fysik, Göteborgs Universitet

2010: Tore Samuelsson, Professor vid Institutionen för Biomedicin, Göteborgs Universitet

2009: Sofia Thorsson, Postdoctoral Fellow in Physical Geography at the University of Gothenburg

2008: Lars Öhrström, professor of inorganic chemistry at the Chalmers Institute of Technology, Gothenburg

2007: Jan O. H. Swantesson, PhD, assistant professor at  Karlstad University