Japan joins Horizon, the summer writing slump, and a workshop

Welcome back. Three things this week: a piece of Horizon Europe news that will interest anyone thinking about international collaboration, an honest conversation about the summer slump nobody warns you about, and one last invitation to my free workshop tomorrow — which is really the answer to the problem in Section 2.

01 · In the field: Japan joins Horizon Europe

Some genuinely good news for the international-collaboration side of our work. Times Higher Education reported last week that Japan has officially become the 23rd associated country of Horizon Europe — and, importantly, the largest non-European nation to take part in the EU's flagship research program. The association covers Pillar II, which has a budget of €52.4 billion and funds research on societal challenges: climate, energy, health, the digital economy, and — crucially for us folks — Cluster 2, Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society, the main collaborative pot for humanities and social sciences.

In practical terms, Japanese researchers and organisations can now join or lead international research projects on the same terms as EU counterparts, and can receive EU funding. Negotiations concluded in December, and Japanese partners have already been able to apply to Pillar II calls since then. As Research Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva put it, Japan "strengthens a growing global community that believes openness, excellence and international cooperation are essential to turning research into innovation." Japan follows South Korea in Asia, and Australia is in the process of associating to Pillar II too.

Why this matters: if you have a colleague, former visiting fellow, or long-lost conference contact in Japan, now is the time to reach out. Cluster 2 calls fund consortia in areas like democracy, cultural heritage, social transformations, and migration — themes where Japanese scholarship is traditionally strong. The autumn 2026 calls are the first where a resarch partner from Japan partner will look meaningful on a proposal if it fits the project. Even if you don't have a perfect idea yet, it makes sense to reach out to your contacts in Japan already. 

02 · On the craft: The problem with summer is the missing semester structure

If you currently feel like a failure because your writing is not progressing, then.... don't. The reason summer writing feels so hard is that we cannot lean on the structure and external deadlines we have during the semester. 

Funnily enough, we do better with time when our calendars are full. That's because we really have consciously make space and time for writing. But in summer? There's no teaching. No corridor chats. No committee meetings pulling you back into a schedule. No students needing an answer by Friday. In term-time, roughly three-quarters of your working life is structured by other people's deadlines — as a 2017 Chronicle piece on the summer slump put it, professors are strictly scheduled for three-quarters of the year and then, for the remaining quarter, they are just quite clueless about how to structure their time. 

Almost none of us are taught how to build a working week from scratch. So we do what feels intuitive: we tell ourselves this is finally the time to write every day. We make a wildly ambitious plan the first week of July, hold it together for four days, miss a day, feel guilty, spiral, and by mid-August we only have half a chapter of chaotic rambling. I see this cycle almost every summer in the academics I coach — and the more talented and conscientious they are, the harder they judge themselves for it. 

So instead of pushing harder, try a small number of protected, intensive writing blocks with real recovery around them, and one or two social anchors in the week — a co-writing session, a check-in with a peer, anything that puts one non-negotiable point of contact into the calendar. When the external structure isn't coming from the institution, you have to build a lighter version of it yourself. It doesn't need to be much. It just needs to exist.

Try this week:

1. Look honestly at your August calendar. If it says "write" every weekday from 9 to 5, that isn't a plan — that's a delusional wish.

2. Pick two writing blocks for next week — real, specific, 90-minute slots. Put them in the calendar with a start time and an end time.

3. Add one social anchor: a co-writing session, a walk with a colleague on Wednesday, or a coffee and accountability meeting with a peer on Friday. Something that gives the week a shape.

03 · Tomorrow: the method for exactly this problem

If Section 2 landed uncomfortably close to home, the workshop I'm running tomorrow is providing you with a solution. On Tuesday, 4 August, we will spend one hour together on how you can use my Retreat Method to finish your writing project this summer. If you haven't used retreats yet in your writing system and also don't know what a writing system is, it's high time you learn about it. Literally every successfully published academic has a system of writing that includes retreats. But you need to know how to organise and run one (or participate in one) so you get the maximum benefit. 

It's hosted inside the Emerge Café, my free community of 300+ social-science and humanities academics — free to join, live plus replay, no strings attached. If you can't be there live, join anyway and you'll get access to the recording. 

Join the Emerge Café & save your seat →

That's it for today! It's a new week - make the best out of it!

Warmly,
Melanie Sindelar
Founder, EMERGE Scholars Collective