Global Minds Project: Building capacity and increasing visibility for sustainable development
The Global Minds Programme (GM), supported by VLIR-UOS, aims to increase VUB’s capacity in knowledge, scientific approaches and technologies to sustain, improve and expand its collaboration with partners in the South. By integrating development issues into education and research, Global Minds strives to foster global citizenship and solidarity in society to better respond to global challenges. The Global Minds framework enables various projects and mobilities.
Calls currently open: Joint PhD
1. XREI: Staff mobility
The objective of this call is to stimulate staff mobility, be it VUB staff travelling South, or Southern staff travelling to VUB, or to a VUB-organised event in Belgium. The mobility should contribute to capacity-building regarding university development cooperation within VUB (in accordance with the Global Minds objectives). The destination is limited to the 37 countries of the GM partner countries.
2. Student group mobility
We also stimulate outgoing student mobility, and structured cooperation between the VUB and international institutions of higher education. The project must be development relevant. The group mobility must contain at least 10 students and each student must obtain at least 15 ECTS ("study credits") at the host institution. The destination is limited to the 37 countries of the GM partner countries. Students wanting to go abroad are required to follow UCOS training before applying to the call.
3. Small great projects
These aim to strengthen the VUB’s academic capacity to participate in university development cooperation. Project proposals should stimulate an (innovative) development dimension in (one or more of) the university’s missions (education, research and outreach). Examples include (but are not limited to) international seminars, alumni gatherings, awareness-raising events on campus and movies on VUB projects, about food, migration, climate crisis, SDGs, entrepreneurship in the Global South, etc.
4. Post-Doc and Joint-PhD
We want to give faculties or departments the chance to hire a post-doc who can focus fully on development-related proposal writing, research, teaching materials, and more. Global Minds wants to strengthen the capacity of departments (and VUB) in terms of university development cooperation. Equally, the call for joint PhDs is to ensure a minimum academic capacity in development at faculty level at VUB to engage efficiently on university development cooperation with other stakeholders and strengthen scientific collaboration with universities in the South through joint research in areas of mutual interest.
University Development Cooperation Career Award
For nurturing partnerships and being an inspiration to others.
At VUB, we’re very proud of the tradition of close collaboration with universities in developing countries. To celebrate our engaged staff, increase the visibility of university development cooperation, and raise awareness among the VUB community about the opportunities, we introduced the UDC Career Award. In 2020, the award went to Prof. Dr. Edilbert Van Driessche.
- UDC Career Award winner 2020: Professor dr Edilbert Van Driessche.
- UDC Career Award winner 2022: Professor dr. Nico Koedam
Universitas call
The UNIVERSITAS scholarships are for students from VUB-linked institutions in developing countries. Applications must be submitted by a VUB academic. The call is currently closed. Other scholarships can be found on scholarships.
