The AXA Research Fund is the scientific philanthropy programme of French insurer AXA Group, created in 2007 to fund academic research into environmental, health, and socio-economic risks. It has since become one of Europe’s larger corporate research funders, and since June 2025 it operates as the science pillar of the AXA Foundation for Human Progress, which consolidated AXA Group’s philanthropic activities (previously spread across the AXA Research Fund and other AXA foundations) under a single umbrella. The Fund makes grants through three distinct instruments: five-year AXA Chairs for senior researchers, two-year Postdoctoral Fellowships for early-career researchers, and Joint Research Initiatives (JRIs) that pair academic teams with AXA’s own business and risk experts. This guide covers what each instrument funds, who is eligible, and how the application process works.
What the AXA Research Fund is and who runs it
AXA created the Research Fund in 2007 as a standalone philanthropic vehicle distinct from AXA’s commercial insurance business, with a stated mission to support academic research that helps society “understand and prepare for” environmental, life, and socio-economic risks — a framing that reflects AXA’s core business as an insurer as much as general scientific philanthropy. According to AXA’s own reporting, the Fund has committed roughly €250 million since its 2007 launch, supporting more than 700 research projects across some 330+ academic institutions in nearly 40 countries. Funded work is organized around three broad areas: Health, Climate & Environment, and Socio-economy & New Tech.
Grant selection is overseen by an independent Scientific Board of academics who review applications on scientific merit, separate from AXA’s business operations. As of the 2025 reorganization into the AXA Foundation for Human Progress, the research programme sits alongside AXA’s other philanthropic commitments (education, prevention, humanitarian relief) as the Foundation’s “Science” pillar, but the grant mechanics described below — Chairs, Postdoctoral Fellowships, and Joint Research Initiatives — continue under the AXA Research Fund name.
The three AXA Research Fund grant types
AXA Chairs
AXA Chairs are five-year grants aimed at senior, established researchers (guidelines have specified a minimum of roughly ten years post-PhD) who propose a transdisciplinary research programme — typically combining social sciences, economics, or humanities with a natural science, engineering, or technology discipline — addressing one of the Fund’s priority risk areas. A Chair is hosted at an academic institution, which co-develops and co-implements the project, often together with a non-academic partner such as a public authority, hospital, or NGO. Funding levels for Chairs have varied across recent calls; institutions and candidates should confirm the current cap and cost eligibility rules against the live call guidelines rather than a fixed figure, since AXA periodically revises programme parameters between funding cycles.
Applications typically begin with an expression of interest submitted through AXA’s online application platform; only a shortlisted subset of candidates is invited to submit a full proposal. Host institutions generally cannot resubmit the same candidate within a set cooling-off period (recent guidelines have specified three years) after an unsuccessful application.
AXA Postdoctoral Fellowships
Postdoctoral Fellowships are the Fund’s early-career instrument: two-year awards for researchers who are no more than approximately five years past their PhD at the time of application and who do not hold a permanent (tenured or tenure-track) academic position. Fellowships are open only through partner academic institutions — the Fund does not accept applications from NGOs, government bodies, other foundations, independent research centres, museums, or hospitals as host organizations. Funding is typically disbursed in installments over the fellowship term rather than as a single lump sum; applicants should check the current call’s guidelines document (published annually on AXA’s research site) for the exact stipend, installment schedule, and eligible cost categories, as these are set per funding cycle.
AXA Joint Research Initiatives (JRIs)
Joint Research Initiatives are structurally different from Chairs and Fellowships: rather than funding a researcher directly, a JRI is a co-funded partnership between an academic research team and one of AXA’s own operating entities or risk-management teams, built around a shared research question of practical relevance to AXA’s business (for example, quantifying an emerging climate or health risk). Because JRIs are initiated and co-designed with an AXA business unit rather than opened through a general call, prospective partners typically need to establish contact through the AXA Research Fund team or an existing AXA business relationship rather than submitting an unsolicited application in the same way as a Chair or Fellowship.
Eligibility and application basics across all three programmes
- Institutional route only. All three AXA Research Fund instruments are awarded through an eligible academic or research institution — individual researchers cannot apply directly without an institutional host, and (per current Fellowship guidelines) non-academic host types such as NGOs, government agencies, independent research institutes, and hospitals are excluded even where the named researcher’s academic credentials would otherwise qualify.
- Career-stage fit matters. Chairs target senior, established academics leading a research programme; Fellowships target early-career researchers before a permanent position; JRIs are typically led by an existing academic team already positioned to partner with an AXA business unit. Applying to the wrong instrument for your career stage is one of the more common avoidable rejections.
- Fit to the Fund’s three priority areas. Proposals are expected to connect clearly to Health, Climate & Environment, or Socio-economy & New Tech — and, for Chairs specifically, to combine a social-science, economics, or humanities lens with a natural-science, engineering, or technology one.
- Applications run through AXA’s online platform. Calls, deadlines, and the current guidelines documents are published on the AXA Research Fund’s “Fund your research” pages; because amounts, durations, and eligibility thresholds are revised between cycles, treat the guidelines document for the specific open call — not a prior year’s figures — as the authoritative source before drafting a proposal.
- Scientific Board review. All three instruments are assessed for scientific merit by AXA’s independent Scientific Board, separate from AXA’s commercial insurance operations.
Practical guidance for researchers seeking AXA funding
Before drafting an application, research administrators and prospective applicants should:
- Confirm current-cycle figures directly. Because AXA revises funding caps, durations, and eligibility windows (such as the postdoctoral PhD-year cutoff) between calls, pull the specific guidelines PDF for the open call from AXA’s research site rather than relying on a previous cycle’s terms, a news article, or a third-party grants-database listing.
- Check the host-institution restriction early. Because Fellowships and Chairs are only awarded through eligible academic institutions, researchers based at hospitals, independent institutes, or non-academic research centres should confirm whether an academic partner institution can serve as the formal host before investing time in a proposal.
- Match the instrument to career stage and project type, not just to whichever AXA call happens to be open — a JRI proposal written like a Chair application (or vice versa) is a frequent source of desk rejection, since the two have fundamentally different partnership structures.
- For JRIs specifically, look for an existing AXA relationship first — through a business unit, a prior AXA-funded researcher, or the AXA Research Fund team — since JRIs are co-designed partnerships rather than a general open call in the same sense as Chairs or Fellowships.
- Plan around the institutional cost and compliance rules that typically apply to any European corporate-philanthropy grant: indirect cost treatment, reporting cadence, and any co-funding or in-kind contribution expectations from the host institution should be confirmed with your institution’s research office before submission, since these interact with the grant’s own eligible-cost rules.
How AXA differs from public research-council chair and fellowship schemes
Because “chair” and “postdoctoral fellowship” are also standard terms in public funding systems, it’s worth being explicit about what makes AXA’s version different: AXA Chairs and Fellowships are funded entirely from AXA Group’s corporate philanthropic budget, not from a national research council or public competitive-grant system, and the review criteria explicitly weight relevance to AXA’s own risk-related research priorities alongside conventional scientific merit. This is a common pattern across corporate and foundation research philanthropy more broadly — compare, for example, how CASRAI’s guides to the Novo Nordisk Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation describe similarly structured, mission-directed private funding streams that sit alongside — rather than substitute for — public research-council funding such as national research-chair programmes.
Frequently asked questions
Is the AXA Research Fund the same as the AXA Foundation?
They are related but not identical. The AXA Research Fund is the specific programme that has made academic research grants since 2007. Since June 2025, it operates as the “Science” pillar within the broader AXA Foundation for Human Progress, which consolidated AXA Group’s various philanthropic programmes under one foundation. The Chairs, Fellowships, and JRI grant mechanics continue under the AXA Research Fund name and application platform.
Can independent researchers or non-academic institutions apply?
No, not directly. All three instruments require an eligible academic institution as the formal host or applicant. Current Postdoctoral Fellowship guidelines explicitly exclude NGOs, government bodies, other foundations, independent research centres, museums, and hospitals as host organizations, even when the individual researcher is otherwise well qualified.
How much funding does an AXA Chair or Fellowship provide?
Funding levels are set per call and have varied across recent funding cycles, so this guide does not quote a fixed figure as current. Applicants should check the guidelines document for the specific open call, published on AXA’s research site, for the exact funding cap, installment schedule, and eligible cost categories in effect for that cycle.
What is a Joint Research Initiative, in practice?
A JRI is a co-funded research partnership between an academic team and an AXA business unit or risk team, built around a shared research question of direct relevance to AXA — distinct from Chairs and Fellowships, which fund a researcher’s own proposed programme through a general call.
Where do I find the current AXA Research Fund calls and deadlines?
AXA publishes open calls, deadlines, and downloadable guidelines documents on its research site’s “Fund your research” pages, and applications are submitted through AXA’s dedicated online application platform. Because eligibility thresholds and funding levels change between cycles, treat the live call page — not a cached search result or third-party grants listing — as authoritative.
Related CASRAI guides
For other private and corporate research funders, see CASRAI’s guides to the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the Simons Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation, or the broader landscape guide to private and nonprofit medical research funders. For how a five-year, institutionally hosted senior research chair compares to a publicly funded equivalent, see CASRAI’s guide to Canada Excellence Research Chairs. For background on the postdoctoral career stage AXA Fellowships target, see the CASRAI dictionary entry on research fellowship. For grants-management fundamentals more broadly, see the CASRAI grants management pillar page.
