Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Well, wonder no more! You will know from my previous blogposts that the ‘Erasmus for All’ Programme will combine schemes under the Lifelong Learning Programme such as Erasmus and Erasmus Mundus, as well as Youth in Action, Sport and others.
The EC has published updated its webpages on this programme and you can find a very helpful Erasmus for All factsheet as well FAQs
Between May 11 and May 17 Howard Davis (Law Department, Business School) made a teaching visit to the Faculty of Law (Facoltà di Giurisprudenza) at the University of Pisa (Università di Pisa). The visit was paid for under the Erasmus teaching exchange scheme which complements a student exchange programme.
The teaching was based around four two hour lectures and discussion on the theme of human rights law. There were two lectures on themes related to UK law: the post coalition government changes to UK counter-terrorism law and recent changes to the right to a fair trial (including the use of closed material procedures in civil cases involving national security). The other two lectures reflected Howard Davis’ current research interests: the rights of victims of international crimes to gain an account of the truth of what happened to them or their relatives. The lectures are given in English to (mainly) Italian law students taking an English languge course. In Pisa there is an interdisciplinary language department (Centro Linguistico Interdipartimentale) which provides these courses and the lecture programme is part of one of these.
Howard Davis has done these lectures for a number of years and it is always a pleasurable and interesting experience. Pisa University is ancient and prestigious. It was founded in 1343 and jurisprudence was one of its original subjects. Gallileo (laws of physics and mathematics rather than civil or natural law!) was one of its famous pupils (the experiment on mass and acceleration, if it happened at all, involved dropping balls off the Leaning Tower). At last, however, the old building which has housed the law faculty for centuries, is in a state of collapse and the law faculty has had to be distributed at different sites around the city. This did not prevent Howad Davis’ visit from being a success and, it is hoped, an effective way of promoting the good name of Bournemouth University abroad.
A key conference on Erasmus is taking place in Poland during May and will feature information on what will be in the Erasmus programme under Horizon 2020.
Anyone with an interest in the Erasmus Programme can attend or present at ERACON 2013 which features delegates from universities and industry across Europe.
Erasmus Intensive Programmes (IP) are short programmes of study which bring together students and teaching staff from higher education institutions of at least three participating countries. They can last from 10 continuous full days to 6 weeks of subject related work.
The application for this funding can be found on the British Council webpage which also has guidance for completing this. The deadline for applications is 8 March 2013. Should you have any queries on completing your application contact the Erasmus Helpdesk .
Just a reminder that the deadline for this is coming up at the end of January 2013 if colleagues are interested in visiting potential partner universities in Europe. The main objective of the action is to help higher education institutions (HEI) to establish contacts with prospective partner institutions with a view to establishing:
• New inter-institutional agreements (not renewals) relating to student and/or staff mobility
• Erasmus Intensive Programmes;
• Erasmus student placements;
• Erasmus networks;
• Erasmus multilateral projects;
• Erasmus accompanying measures.
The preparatory visit grant may be used to visit:
• Either one or more prospective partner higher education institutions (the visited HEIs do not need to have an EUC);
• Or an enterprise or organisation.
Preparatory visit grants may also be used to participate in a partner-finding “contact seminar” organised by a National Agency. In addition, preparatory visit grants may be awarded to enterprises or other organisations for the purpose of helping them to establish consortia for the organisation of Erasmus student placements. Usually a grant is awarded to just one person per visit, but in exceptional cases two staff from the same institution can be awarded a grant to undertake a visit together. Only one visit per potential project will be funded.
To apply, you need to complete the Erasmus PV Application Form. There is also a Erasmus PV Resource Pack to help you and more information is available on the British Council website . You can send also any queries relating to Preparatory visits by email.
Just a reminder that the deadline for this is coming up at the end of December 2012 if colleagues are interested in visiting potential partner universities in Europe. The main objective of the action is to help higher education institutions (HEI) to establish contacts with prospective partner institutions with a view to establishing:
• New inter-institutional agreements (not renewals) relating to student and/or staff mobility
• Erasmus Intensive Programmes;
• Erasmus student placements;
• Erasmus networks;
• Erasmus multilateral projects;
• Erasmus accompanying measures.
The preparatory visit grant may be used to visit:
• Either one or more prospective partner higher education institutions (the visited HEIs do not need to have an EUC);
• Or an enterprise or organisation.
Preparatory visit grants may also be used to participate in a partner-finding “contact seminar” organised by a National Agency. In addition, preparatory visit grants may be awarded to enterprises or other organisations for the purpose of helping them to establish consortia for the organisation of Erasmus student placements. Usually a grant is awarded to just one person per visit, but in exceptional cases two staff from the same institution can be awarded a grant to undertake a visit together. Only one visit per potential project will be funded.
To apply, you need to complete the Erasmus PV Application Form. There is also a Erasmus PV Resource Pack to help you and more information is available on the British Council website . You can send also any queries relating to Preparatory visits by email.
The BU EU Showcase event today is providing the platform to launch the second round of our EUADS and EUNF schemes!
The EU Academic Development Scheme (EUADS) is a unique scheme developed to kick start your career in EU research; it’s open to all BU academic staff relatively inexperienced in gaining EU funding. The EUADS will help you build up to making a submission by providing unlimited 1-2-1 support from an expert EU bid writer, group mentoring and unlimited assistance in actually writing your application over a 12 month period. As if this training wasn’t fantastic in itself, and the supportive culture of being a cohort undertaking the journey of EU funding extremely appealing, the EUADS also includes an individual fund. Each successful participant will be provided with grants as requested totalling up to a whopping £3k each by to spend on activities supporting bid development, such as:
• Travel with the intent of networking
• Conference attendance with the intent of networking
• Pilot research work
• Fieldwork
• Attendance at external networking events leading to collaborative research proposals
• Meetings with external organisations to establish collaborations
• Preparation of specialist material or data
• Replacement teaching
You can read more on this scheme in the EUADS Policy Document and make a submission using the EUADS Application Form; the deadline is 18.12.12
The EU Networking Fund (EUNF) is open to any BU academics who want to network across Europe with a view to finding collaborators. We have a pot of money to support this scheme, and the fund will end when the pot is empty.
You can apply for support for a range of activities relating directly to networking, such as:
• Travel with the intent of networking
• Conference attendance with the intent of networking
• Attendance at external networking events leading to collaborative research proposals
• Meetings with external organisations to establish collaborations.
You can read more on this scheme in the EUNF Policy Document and make a submission using the EUNF Application Form; there is no deadline.
You can search the blog for many wonderful stories from our academics who have received support from these schemes. And don’t forget we also currently have the BU in Brussels scheme open until 28.11.12 and the Fusion Investment Fund Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme open until 01.12.12.
There are plenty of EU initiatives to support you here at BU, so don’t miss out!
Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism has recently signed three Erasmus agreements with three Universities in Europe to enhance international links to high quality international research and teaching institutions, especially in the area of sport business and events management.
To celebrate this recent agreement Dr Tim Breitbarth (Senior Lecturer in Sport Management) organised various guest lectures, presentations to staff and students as well as informal opportunities to meet and mingle as part of an International Week in Sport and Events Management.
Professor Dr Sebastian Kaiser, a professor in sport and events at the SRH Hochschule Heidelberg; Dr Stefan Walzel a senior lecturer at the German Sport University Cologne, Institute of Sport Economics and Sport Management; and Gerco Van Dalfsen, a program coordinator sport management at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen and Secretary General of the European Association of Sport Management all took part in international week and also represented their university.
On Wednesday Sebastian, Stefan and Gerco hosted a presentation as part of the School of Tourism Staff Development. A substantial number of colleagues from across School of Tourism, research students and university managers concerned with international development attended the session.
Dr Richard Shipway (Associate Dean International Engagement) framed the presentations by mentioning relevant aspects of BU’s strategy to create more and higher quality international opportunities for staff and students.
Gerco, Stefan, Sebastian each presented their respective universities and provided an overview of their study programmes. In particular, they showed how they integrate international student exchange, international competitions and workshops into their programs in order to enhance student abilities and networking. School of Tourism staff were, for example, impressed by the vast and modern sport and scientific infrastructure of the German Sport University Cologne, and the strong international and multidisciplinary focus of sport, events and health programmes at Hanze University. The presentations and opportunities to cooperate led to lively conversations and concrete projects/ideas to follow-up.
The second part of the Lecture on Wednesday saw Stefan and Sebastian present some of their high quality research. :
Stefan provided insights into the discussions around relevance and impacts of the Youth Olympics and the organisation of the first summer and winter Youth Olympics. The particular focus of his empirical investigation was on the use of ambush marketing despite clean venues and no commercial sponsorship allowed at the games. German Sport University Cologne also very successfully integrated student visits and volunteering at the games with both international teaching and study opportunities.
Sebastian outlined similarities and peculiarities of events management in sports and culture from socioeconomic theory. In his empirical study he explores the impact of the economic sectors by utilising regression analysis of a dataset from surveys amongst managers within the industry. His major conclusion was that events management may benefit not only from a dialogue between science and practice but particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective integrating theories and approaches from sports and culture management.
On Friday, Sebastian and Stefan helped kick off the weekly Research Seminar Series for, mainly, sport science and sport management students. Around 100 students attended and Dr Ian Jones (Associate Dean Sport) pointed out that those regular seminars are to widen student’s horizon and an opportunity to engage with relevant topics that may be beyond their core areas of interest.
The presentations from the international visitors provided the students with a glimpse of how/what their peers in other countries are taught; an important experience since those universities no longer educate their students for national markets but acknowledge that they have to compete on an international labour market after graduation.
Stefan’s presentation introduced the students to the link between psychological, behavioural and economic dimensions behind corporate hospitality activities at sport events. Whereas the main conclusion from Sebastian’s presentation was that there are different ways to calculate the possible impacts of events based on the same numbers.
Students were invited to mingle with the presenters and amongst each other afterwards in Dylan’s Bar and a few students used this opportunity to discuss particular aspects of the respective topics in special and the international sport management in general.
Students that attended the Lectures and Seminars were given the opportunity to win quality merchandise from the new partner universities.
All three of the visiting Lecturers were in Bournemouth for 5 days and were very impressed with the Bournemouth University campus and its facilities, especially our eLearning opportunities / environment.
For further information about the International Week or our new Erasmus partner universities please contact Dr Tim Breitbarth on tbreitbarth@bournemouth.ac.uk or 01202 965113.
You may or may not have heard of the Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme which BU has run for the last few years. If you have, then you will know it is a great scheme. If you haven’t then now is a great chance to learn more. Grants are available for BU staff to visit an enterprise or university in Europe and undertake teaching or training. This is not only a fantastic experience in itself but also a really great way to start to develop your networks. Your visit can be between 5 days and 6 weeks and non-academic staff can apply to the teaching strand too.
This year, I have taken over the gauntlet from Deborah Velay and incorporated the Erasmus Staff Mobility fund into the Fusion Investment Staff Mobility and Networking Fund. There is a really short application form to complete and the deadline is December 1st. The processes have been combined to improve our efficiency in delivering this scheme to you.
The Fusion Investment Fund was launched today and you can find out more on this absolutely brilliant scheme by following the link posted on the blog.
If the answer to the above is ‘Yes!’ then have I got good news for you! The Erasmus Preparatory Visit Fund was developed with this in mind and is open for applications right now. The main objective of the funding is to help higher education institutions (HEI) to establish contacts with prospective partner institutions with a view to establishing:
*New inter-institutional agreements (not renewals) relating to student and/or staff mobility
*Erasmus Intensive Programmes;
*Erasmus Student placements;
*Erasmus networks;
*Erasmus multilateral projects;
*Erasmus accompanying measures.
The preparatory visit grant may be used to visit either one or more prospective partner higher education institutions, enterprise or organisation. You can also use the funding to participate in a partner-finding “contact seminar” organised by a National Agency.
Usually a grant is awarded to just one person per visit, but in exceptional cases two staff from the same institution can be awarded a grant to undertake a visit together. Only one visit per potential project will be funded.
The duration must be between 1 and 5 days and all activity must be undertaken by 30.04.13. The deadline for applications is 31.12.12 and all forms are available on the British Council website. You can send any queries relating to Preparatory visits by email.
I am pleased to announce that the Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme will now fall under the Fusion Investment Staff Mobility & Networking strand and this will be launched next week! I will blog more about this when the funding is announced but it is important to note that the Erasmus Staff Mobility scheme focuses on making connections with those institutions with whom you already have some contact with. If you need to build up relationships with blossoming contacts then please do complete the really short Erasmus Preparatory Visit application form. You will need to enterthe Erasmus ID for BU when making the application, our fantastic RKE Operations EU specialist Paul Lynch will provide you with this when you contact him to say you will be making an application.
Don’t forget that you can also use our fantastic internal peer review process the RPRS and I can also give you access to an expert bid writer if you let me know you are interested in applying before the end of October!
Erasmus intensive programmes facilitate student mobility for studies and placements and staff mobility. Projects funded under this programme will encourage education, vocational education and training. The Erasmus programme enables students to study abroad and supports collaboration between higher education institutions. The following are available with a closing date of March 2013:
•intensive programmes: lasting for between 10 continuous days and six weeks, to bring together students and teaching staff from higher education institutions of at least three participating countries
•student mobility for studies: lasting for between three and 12 months, enabling students at higher education institutions to spend an integrated study period in another participating country (see BU website for Erasmus student exchanges)
•student mobility for placements: lasting for between two and 12 months, enabling students at higher education institutions to spend a placement period in an enterprise or organisation in another participating country (see BU website forErasmus work placements)
•staff mobility: lasting from one day to six weeks, enabling staff to spend a teaching period at a higher education institution in another participating country (see BU website for Erasmus staff mobility)
•staff mobility: lasting from five working days to six weeks, enabling teaching and other staff of higher education institutions to spend a period of training in an enterprise or organisation, such as an HEI, in another participating country (see BU website for Erasmus staff mobility)
The Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) is a great way to launch your EU career. It is run by the EC and provides opportunities for organisations, staff and learners involved in education and training across Europe to work together, learn from each other’s’ expertise, and widen their experience of other cultures and languages. The LLP is made up of several programmes, each aimed at a specific target group. The most relevant for BU staff are:
- Erasmus (focused on Higher Educaution)
- Leonardo (focused on Vocational Education and Training)
- Grundtvig (focused on non-Vocational Adult Education)
- Transversal (focused on Learning Professionals)
There is a useful free infoday being held in Brussels on November 12th which will provide info on the 2013 call for proposals and give practical advice on proposal preparation and submission. There will also be presentations from successful award holders and the infodays are always a key opportunity for networking with other interested academics from around the world so is a very valuable experience.
However, you may not be able to take time out of your schedule to attend so very helpfully the EC are also broadcasting this live online. You will also have an online ‘chat’ facility to search and get in touch with other people looking for partners to participate. If you aren’t free on the 12th of November, you will also be able to access the videos online afterwards.
Registration for both attending and receiving the webstream will be available in September; you can keep an eye on the EACEA webpage for this opening. You can also whet your appetite for this funding programme by reading our successful Leonardo grant holder Dr Christos Gatzidis’ experience of participating in his excellent blogpost.
The deadlines for the programme this year are 03/12/2012, 16/01/2013, 31/01/2013, 01/02/2013, 15/02/2013, 21/02/2013, 28/02/2013, 08/03/2013, 28/03/2013, 30/04/2013, 17/09/2013
You may remember that earlier this month I posted an update you on the latest Erasmus for All plans. Last week, the official draft of the Erasmus for All programme was published. It pretty much confirms what my previous blogpost suggested, but in case you want to read it in all its glory, you can do so here: Erasmus For All draft report 20.07.12
Finally just a reminder that the Erasmus Student Network survey is still open for responses until the end of the month if you wish to get involved, as per my previous blogpost.
The focus of this year’s edition is to investigate the employability of mobile and non-mobile students and show the beneficial effects of going abroad. The survey also explores the impact of student mobility on entrepreneurship and European citizenship, and gives insight into students´ satisfaction with ESN and other student organisations.
The survey will stay open until the 30th of September and takes no more than 15 minutes to fill in. All participants who complete it have the chance to win a two week intensive language course including 32 lessons in the exclusive Education First school in Manchester (with a total value of more than EUR 1,000).
Accommodation in a host family or residence and a meal plan are included as well as the flight and transfer are included.
An Erasmus for All event was held last week, hosted by the German Academic Exchange Service and brought together representatives from the European Commission, the European Parliament for presentations and a round table discussion. There is a report on Erasmus for All being drafted and its creator gave the following key points as to what will be in it:
The draft report will be finalised this week which will then be translated and presented in the Culture and Education Committee (CULT) on 19 September and should be voted on in CULT in November. The vote in plenary is currently scheduled for January 2013, but is subject to the Council’s proposal on the EU Budget for the next financing period 2014-2020.
It is also proposed that “Erasmus for All” will have a new category of transnational partnership called Sector Skills Alliances (SSA) to promote cooperation between three categories of partners: the world of education and training (VET providers); sector-specific expertise (including social partners, sectoral federations, Chambers etc.); and bodies involved in education and training systems (public or private bodies or authorities). Drawing on evidence of skills needs and trends, SSA will work to design and deliver joint curricula and methods which provide learners with the skills required by the labour market. The overall goal is systemic impact on training in the economic sectors concerned in order to increase their competitiveness. The current call for proposals provides and direct support for testing Sector Skills Alliances to draw lessons for future implementation.
I will keep you posted on further developments.
BU had had a successful track record with Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, Leonardo da Vinci and other Lifelong Learning programme initiatives so I am pleased to have an update on these in Horizon 2020. This year the Erasmus scheme is 25 years old it’s good to see that education and youth policies remain high on the EU agenda and features heavily in documents such as Europe 2020 and Education and Youth 2020 strategy.
In order to avoid duplication and increase simplification, for Horizon 2020 the lifelong learning programmes, Erasmus, Grundtvig, Leonardo and Cornelius, Youth in Action and other smaller programmes will be compressed into 3 Erasmus for All initiatives with a whopping €19billion budget. The current 7 different co-financing rules will all be harmonised into one set of rules for all schemes within this programme. Also under the current programmes we need to have an Erasmus University Charter which will still be needed. Once you have it you never need to apply again, which is good for BU as we already have it. This Charter covers different aspects of mobility for staff, students and placements and the EC are currently debating how best they can amalgamate these without making places like BU having to apply from scratch again. The three proposed Erasmus for All initiatives are:
1. Learning Mobility: This will focus on individuals and will have 63% of the budget. It will target staff (youth workers, school workers, teachers, trainers) and Higher Education students and Masters students. It will also cover volunteering and youth exchanges for young people and mobility outside of the EU. So what does this mean for us? Well, more mobility is available as Erasmus has an international focus, not just EU. I will offer high quality joint Masters degrees through consortiums of universities and also will provide us with student loan guarantees to boost mobility.
2. Cooperation Projects: This will have 25% of the budget which will be used to support cooperation in order to achieve innovation and good practice which it will achieve through strategic partnership support between various stakeholders (including education to education and education to businesses). It wants to use funding to explore how we can make graduates more employable – what skills and competencies for graduates need to be employed in certain sectors. It will also support large scale partnerships between higher education institutes and businesses through large ‘knowledge alliances’ (up to €1m) and support third county capacity building. So what does this mean for us? The will be Erasmus Clusters which have intense cooperation between countries which we need to be part of. We need to also get involved with businesses to achieve the knowledge alliance aspects and we can also now target countries outside of the EU to build working relationships with. Finally we could start to use strategic partnerships through this type of funding to establish future Marie Curie fellowships.
3. Policy Support: This funds holds 4% of the budget and will be used for policy reform, particularly this policies mentioned in the introduction. It will support the valorisation and implementation of EU transparency tools, policy dialogue with stakeholders and will cover the entire world and not just the EU. So what does this mean for us? We can get involved with countries sours de of Europe and contribute to policy development.
What about Jean Monnet and sport funding? Don’t worry these will also exist in Erasmus for All. Jean Monnet will remain pretty much exactly how it is supporting institutions who promote European citizenship. As for sport, it was determined by the EC that many aspects of sport research involve the need for learning, such as why racism exists in sport, and so they have included it within the Erasmus for All scheme.
By early 2013 the European Parliament would have reviewed and agreed the final proposals for Erasmus for All and so we will know the final details as how it will look and confirmation of the budgets etc at this point. I will of course keep you updated each time in receive any information.
I am delighted so many of you have been inspired to apply for Erasmus Mundus after Rudy Gozlan’s recent success with the TECHNO project (presentation available at I:\R&KEO\Public\RDU\Erasmus Mundus). With this in mind, RKE Operations will now manage both the pre- and post- award process for all Erasmus Mundus applications with immediate effect. The process will therefore be just like any research bid you wish to submit at BU, and the key person to contact if you wish to apply is Paul Lynch.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, the Erasmus Mundus is a European Commission funding programme which provides organisations such as BU in order to establish partnerships and to individual researchers, students or professional support staff in order to study/ research/ teach. There are 3 ‘actions’ of support which you can read in more detail in this blogpost. It’s a great scheme and a fantastic way to create networks across the world.
Erasmus Mundus is not to be confused with its sister ‘Erasmus’ programme which supports study exchanges and work placements in Europe for students for a minimum of 3 months and funding to help support staff teaching or training visits to partner universities or enterprises in Europe. This will still be managed by Deborah Velay in Student & Academic Services as it is heavily student focused, has different pre- and post- award management requirements to Erasmus Mundus.
Any confusion between the two schemes should be eliminated with the Erasmus for All programme which will see the merger of 7 huge Lifelong Learning Programmes funded by the Commission, including Erasmus, Erasmus Mundus, Leonardo, Grundtvig, etc. I will keep you posted with details as I get them!
The EC has proposed **Supersized** version of the Erasmus Prorgramme with a whopping 70% increase in funding and more wide ranging for education funding 2014-2020 called ‘Erasmus for All’ (totaling €19-billion).
Erasmus for All would merge the 7 existing programmes, such as the Lifelong Learning or Youth in Action programmes, under one single banner to increase efficiency, make it easier to apply for funding, reduce fragmentaton and duplication.
Erasmus for All aims to enable education systems to ‘deliver the knowledge and skills needed in an increasingly globalised labour market’, according to the EC. Several programme names, such as Leonardo or Comenius, will disappear and be branded as Erasmus actions. “In setting up an integrated single programme, it makes sense to avoid multiple names and to capitalise on the popularity and awareness of the Erasmus brand” the EC said.
The programme would include three “key actions”: learning mobility (66% of the budget), including funding for student and staff mobility; cooperation for innovation (26%), to increase links between education and business, as well as between Europe and other regions; and policy reform (5%), including the modernisation of higher education and Bologna reform. The remaining 3 % of the programme’s budget would fund operating costs in national agencies.
The proposal will now be discussed by the European Parliament and Member States through the Council of the EU. It is expected that there might be some modifications to the proposal during the co-decision process, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2013 to allow the new programme to start on 1 January 2014.
BU staff can login below:
New weight change BU paper
One week to go! | The 16th Annual Postgraduate Research Conference
Geography and Environmental Studies academics – would you like to get more involved in preparing our next REF submission?
Congratulations to three former BU staff
MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline
Applications are now open for 2025 ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowships!
Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars MSCA Staff Exchanges 2024 Call – internal deadline Horizon Europe – ERC CoG and MSCA SE webinars
MaGMap: Mass Grave Mapping
ERC grants – series of webinars Last reminder – MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 internal deadline next week
Research Information Network