The deadline for the first joint call for EELISA Communities is approaching (24th July). This initiative aims to boost transnational mobility, fostering cross-sectional networking within EELISA as well as increase the visibility of the activities offered by the EELISA Communities.
On 30 June, potential applicants had the chance to meet with the EELISA team that has designed the call to learn more about it and share their questions and feedback. (Watch the replay here)
EELISA Work Package 1 leader, Ignacio Gonzalez (UPM), was one of the members involved in the development of this call. In this interview, he offers us some insights into the design process, the aims, and the expected outcomes of this important call.
Q. What has been the main motivation to launch this joint call?
A. If we want to create a European University, we need to achieve permanent collaboration at all levels. This will be possible if we connect our people and these people live incredible experiences and talk about it. This is the true motivation of the call: Connecting people and having stories to tell.
Q. Can you tell us about the design process and who has been involved?
A. Several work teams have prepared the call itself, but the process is much wider and started much earlier. This joint call is somehow gathering a lot of the work done for the creation of EELISA. It has been possible after the mutual understanding already achieved. In this broad process, not only the teams working on EELISA but also the pioneers participating in different activities have contributed to the development of the concepts that are involved in the call.
Q. How do you expect this call will impact the emergence of new EELISA Communities and the consolidation of the already existing ones?
A. In absolute terms, the call does not mean such a large budget that may significantly change the number or the size of communities, but we hope that it will be enough to find motivated people and that these people will be able to find additional resources later on. In fact, the call addresses one of the main barriers at this point: Finding peers from other EELISA partners. It will be a success if new connections are created.
Q. On June 30th, there was an on-line interactive session about the call with potential applicants. From your point of view, what was the main outcome of this session?
A. The main outcome was probably the fruitful interaction with the potential applicants that we had. The main asset of EELISA is the motivation of the people participating in the creation of the alliance and every time that we, the working teams, have the chance to listen to main users, we the potential value of this alliance. I personally appreciate the backstage collaboration of the team preparing the session. We wanted to give a casual and fresh information session, highlighting the fact that this is a joint and inter institutional initiative.
A call to boost mobility, networking and visibility.
This first joint call targets EELISA Communities and transnational activities offered by EELISA Communities – it is a call open to university educators, researchers, students, and staff from all EELISA institutions and disciplines, with a preferred relation to innovation, technical solutions, and an engineering mindset
What are “EELISA Community (transnational) activities”?
They are defined as educational, research, innovation, or outreach activities organized by EELISA institutional partners from at least two different countries.
Some examples of activities are:
- Student contests, e.g. hackathons, idea contests or capstone projects
- Summer / Winter / Seasonal Schools
- International seminars/ lecture series/ MOOCs / hybrid or blended teaching
- Cross-institutional internships, Bachelor/ Master theses, and transnational company visits
- Social events contributing to broader social welfare and sustainability
- Doctoral Colloquia
- Research retreats, symposia or conferences with student participation
- Etc…
Designing new EELISA Community activities as well as opening up existing activities are also eligible!
What kind of support is EELISA offering?
With a total budget of up to 300.000€, EELISA will support selected EELISA Community activities with an amount of up to 8,000 € per activity for personnel and other costs. Additionally, EELISA will provide travel and subsistence costs for participants. In total, EELISA institutions will provide a budget of up to 200.000€ for mobilities and up to 100.000 Euros for personnel and other costs.
How can you submit a proposal?
Log into the EELISA Community Platform with your local institutional credentials using edugain to access the full call and the application template.
Proposals can be submitted until 24 July 2022.
FOR MORE INFO AND SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS CLICK HERE