Recently, the National Arts Fund announced the approval of general projects for 2025, and ZWU has successfully secured two new projects: one for communication and promotion funding and the other for art talent training funding. The number of approved projects matches that of Zhejiang University and Zhejiang Communication University, placing us among the top institutions in the province. Additionally, we received a special project under the National Social Science Fund focused on ideological and political education in universities, marking a significant breakthrough for our school in this area. Furthermore, we obtained four new projects from the latest round of provincial philosophy and social science planning funding provided by the Zhejiang Social Sciences Federation, representing a notable increase in the number of approved projects in this category. By the end of December, ZWU had secured eight national-level projects, 33 provincial and ministerial-level projects, and nearly 100 municipal and departmental-level projects in the field of humanities and social sciences for 2024. High-level projects have experienced “counter-cyclical growth”, setting a new record for the number of approved projects and further diversifying the types of projects.

Since 2024, ZWU has adhered to a research strategy focused on “emphasizing planning, rationalizing mechanisms, strengthening guidance, and optimizing services”. By deepening organized research, we have continuously promoted the high-quality and connotative development of scientific research, yielding significant results. Over the past year, ZWU held a research work promotion meeting to summarize, mobilize, and deploy efforts; school leaders visited various secondary colleges multiple times to conduct research, identify challenges and “pain points”, clarify breakthrough directions, and explore application potential. The research management department meticulously organized and planned, adhering to the principles of “understanding the situation, early mobilization, focusing on key points, and ensuring quality”, while introducing multiple systems to strengthen service support. Each secondary college earnestly implemented responsibilities, actively mobilized efforts, and specifically invited renowned experts from both inside and outside the school to conduct multiple rounds of demonstrations and guidance for project applications. Moving forward, ZWU will further strengthen top-level design, actively plan and layout, fully tap into potential, implement organized research, and strive to advance our new liberal arts to a new stage of high-level, high-quality, and high-standard development, making significant contributions to the construction of a strong province and city in social sciences.

In the face of an increasingly competitive environment, ZWU is committed to making dual efforts in application services and management, achieving multiple breakthroughs in research within the field of humanities and social sciences in 2024. Notably, we secured three projects in the Ministry of Education’s regional and country-specific research special topics, ranking among the top institutions nationwide; we obtained six projects in the newly added provincial philosophy and social science planning “provincial-city cooperation” special topics, ranking second in the city; and we secured one project in the provincial cultural research engineering project, achieving new breakthroughs in recent years.