Global Minds
📣 New and revised call for
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📣 New call for
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📣 New call for
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UDC Career Award
📣 New call for nominations for the University Development Cooperation Career Award
We want to increase visibility and raise awareness about the opportunities for sustainable development cooperation, but mainly we wish to acknowledge VUB professors and their contribution to university development cooperation. Nominations for the UDC Career Award 2023 are now open. Deadline: 23 January 2023.
Universitas Scholarships
📣 2023 Call currently open!
We currently accept proposals for Master and PhD scholarships to candidates belonging to VUB-linked institutions in the Global South.
The deadline for submissions is 20 February 2023.
Flemish University Development Cooperation
🚀 New call: Policy Supporting Programme (PSP)
The Policy Supporting Programme is a joint project between VLIR-UOS, ARES, and DGD. The programme delivers research output on demand of the Belgian government in these important thematic areas: Climate & Environment; Fragility & Resilience; Social Protection, Inequality & Inclusive Growth.
- Call and modalities (deadline 14 March 2023)
- Register for the information session on 9 February 2023 from 10:00 until 12:00
(registration deadline: 3 February)
📣 Open calls:
- Short Initiatives - deadline: 16 March 2023
- International Training Programme - deadline: 23 March 2023
- International Master Programme - expected by April 2023

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.
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
The objective of student group mobility projects is to enhance world citizenship through outgoing student mobility and to promote structured cooperation between VUB and institutions/organisations in 37 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.
- UDC Career Award winner 2020: Professor dr Edilbert Van Driessche.
- UDC Career Award winner 2022: Professor dr. Nico Koedam
- UDC Career Award winner 2023: Now accepting nominations until 23 January 2023!
For more information, please refer to the call for nominations and the application form.
Universitas
The Universitas scholarship programme aims to strengthen existing cooperation between VUB and partners in the Global South. Consequently, the Universitas scholarships will, as part of the internationalisation policy of VUB, contribute to the realisation of the SDGs.
The Universitas Call for 2023 is currently open. The deadline for submissions is 20 February 2023. Submissions must be made by a ZAP-member of VUB. Please consult the call document and application form at the top of this page. For any further questions, feel free to contact ICOS@vub.be.