FWO Bilateral Research Projects with South Africa

Research

Funding organisation:

Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen

What?

The FWO and the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) have launched the call for joint research projects open to fundamental research in all scientific disciplines. These three-year joint research projects go beyond the classic exchange and collaboration projects, because staff and consumables can also be financed. The entire Flemish team can request a max. of € 85.000 per year for staff and consumables and max. € 150.000 per project for equipment.

Please note:

• In the framework of this call with South Africa, you can only act once as a supervisor(-spokesperson) or co-supervisor.
• Applications in the framework of this cooperation are not part of the FWO regular research project competition and:
  • no distinction is made between junior and senior research projects.
  • do not count for the maximum of one project per application round for which you may act as (co-)supervisor;
  • are not taken into account for the maximum of two ongoing projects on the start date of the newly allocated project.

Application?

A joint fully integrated application with one central problem, methodology and elaboration must be submitted simultaneously at FWO by a research group from Flanders and at NRF by a research group from South Africa. Deadline for submission is the 26th of May 2025 (5pm local time) for FWO as well as for NRF. Projects will start in January 2027.

The online FWO application form contains a specific tab 'Research Security'. Applicants are required, based on the topic of their research proposal, involved countries and foreign partners, to complete a set of questions regarding unwanted knowledge transfer, misuse of research results and/or interference. If as a result of this, your project proposal needs a research security approval, please contact the dedicated contact persons at your host institution immediately, preferably before the submission of your proposal. A presentation on this subject can be consulted here.

From this call onwards, you will find an additional question in the application form about the ‘substantive and/or conceptual contribution’ that the applicant(s) and possibly others have made to the research design and, where applicable, to the associated data collection and analysis and/or interpretation thereof. This concerns information that allows the evaluators to better understand the genesis of the research proposal. Sometimes questions are raised about the extent to which an applicant for a project or mandate has developed the proposal themselves or has (re)used existing ideas from other proposals. It is also a matter of ethics to acknowledge those who have contributed ideas and data, whether as co-applicants, researchers not involved in the application, or in any other capacity. However, this new section in the forms is not intended as a new criterion for scoring the application

More information?

More information and further details on the rules for participation can be found on the FWO website and in the guidelines for applicants. 

Please contact research@uhasselt.be if you want to apply.

Deadline intern

19.05.2026, 26.05.2026

Contact Hasselt University?

E-mail sarah.szyr@uhasselt.be

Tel. +3211269052