UNIL CIVIS Call Networking – Seed Funding  

SPRING 2023

“CIVIS – a European civic University” is an alliance of the following European universities:

• Aix-Marseille Université (France),
• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece),
• University of Bucharest (Romania),
• Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium),
• Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain),
• Sapienza Università di Roma (Italy),
• Stockholm University (Sweden)
• Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Germany)
• Paris LodronUniversitätSalzburg (Austria)
• University of Glasgow (UK)
• University of Lausanne (Switzerland)

CIVIS aims to promote European values, cultures and citizenship among students, academics and stakeholders and will act as a bridge between Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa. It aims to be a vector of change and innovation in the following areas: Health; Cities, Territories and Mobility; Climate, Environment, Energy; Digital and Technological Transformations; Societies, Culture and Heritage.

Since October 1^st2022, UNIL is a member of CIVIS European University alliance and through this call it aims at making CIVIS visible towards its academic community.

UNIL is launching a CIVIS seed funding call for networking to develop joint academic activities with the ten partner universities.

• DESCRIPTION OF THE CALL

Purpose – Aims

The objective of this call launched by the University of Lausanne (UNIL) is to facilitate the networking among academics and the preparation of future CIVIS joint academic projects.

This Call will allow the organization of meetings of UNIL academics with other CIVIS colleagues to exchange ideas and identify mutual interests for future collaborations.

The project proposal could be a new initiative starting from scratch or it could consist in an existing collaboration that would be enlarged to new CIVIS partners. For instance, coordinators of the existing ongoing CIVIS Hubs projects can contact UNIL colleagues to propose them a participation in their ongoing activities. Likewise, UNIL academics can get in touch with other CIVIS colleagues to propose them to join a collaboration.

General Guidelines

• The project must include academics from at least three CIVIS member-universities (including UNIL). 
• The project should related to CIVIS Hubs thematics 
• The physical mobility activity cannot exceed 5 days.
• Location of the activities: UNIL Campus or other CIVIS universities’ campus
• The seed funding cannot exceed 8 000 CHF per project (depending on nb of participants & nb of mobility days to be reimbursed on real cost incurred).
• Proposals submission deadline is May 30^th, 2023.
• Funded activities should be implemented before December 30^th, 2023.
• Contact for more information: civis@unil.ch 

Format of activities

The activities that could be funded through this call are the following:

• Academic preparatory meetings
• Thematic workshops/meeting
• Seminars/webinars

The medium-term objective should be developing one of the following CIVIS activities:

• Seminars
• Workshops
• Blended Intensive Programmes
• Summer/Winter Schools

The activities could target Bachelor, Master or PhD students.

Those future activities will be submitted in future CIVIS Call for projects and, if approved, open to the students of the 11 CIVIS member universities.

Theme

The projects should:

• Be related to one of the 5 Hubs of the CIVIS Alliance:
  1. Climate, Environment, Energy
  2. Society, Culture, Heritage
  3. Health 
  4. Cities, Territories, Mobilities
  5. Digital & Technological transformations

Possibly, the proposal should tackle one or more focus areas identified by the Hubs Councils:

HUB1 Climate, Environment, Energy:

Hub 1 initiatives will be organized into a framework which is partly based on focal challenges defined by Future Earth (https://futureearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/future-earth_10-year-vision_web.pdf). This framework encompasses research-oriented education and knowledge-action education pathways that target the following focal challenges:

1. Deliver energy, water, and food for all
2. Decarbonise socio-economic systems to stabilise the climate
3. Safeguard the terrestrial, freshwater and marine natural assets
4. Increase resilience and promote sustainable transformations
5. Create fundamental knowledge about climate, environment and energy

HUB2 Society, Culture, Heritage:

Hub 2 initiatives will be organized within the framework of the following focus areas:

1. Mediterranean Studies: Diachronic and Intercultural Perspectives
2. Heritage and Global Epistemologies
3. Diverse Societies, Inequality and Social Change
4. Multicultural and Multilingual Communication and Education
5. Law, Norms, Ethics and Political Institutions

HUB3 Health:

The activities should be related to one or more of the following domains of HEALTH defined by the CIVIS Health Hub Council:

1. Aging and geriatric medicine, social gerontology
2. Anaesthesiology, pain management, and critical care medicine
3. Biochemistry and genetics, medical biotechnologies, diagnostics, gene therapy and bioinformatics, epigenetics
4. Diagnostic imaging, Biomedical engineering, robotics in medicine, new medical devices and digital health & tracking devices
5. Mental health, clinical psychology, psychiatry, addictions, eating disorders, ergonomics, occupational health, inter-cultural health
6. Cancer medicine, immunology, and immunotherapies
7. Cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and metabolic diseases, rehabilitation
8. Chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases
9. Endocrinology, urology, reproductive and sexual health
10. Gastroenterology, hepatology, and microbioresearch
11. Health economics, healthcare management, healthcare policies, health inequalities, public health, including preventative health
12. Immunity, infectious diseases, microbiolology, global health, environmental health, community health, social and inclusive medicine
13. Medical humanities and innovative pedagogies, professional development, history of medicine & health, psycho-social studies of medicine & health, ethics and philosophy of health & medicine
14. Neonatal and pediatric health, perinatal psychology
15. Neurophysiology, neuroscience, neurodegenerative diseases, neuropsychology and neurorehabilitation
16. Nursing, integrated and coordinated models of care, physical medicine, rehabilitation, disabilities, motor sciences, anatomy and physiology
17. Oral health
18. Pharmacy, pharmacology, nutrition, nanosciences and nanoformulation, social pharmacology

HUB4 Cities, territories, mobility:

Hub 4 initiatives should address issues that are consistent with a framework, partly based on actions defined by the EU Urban Agenda (https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/urban-agenda/action-plans):

1. Climate and environmental challenges for cities
2. Social and employment challenges
3. Resilient and sustainable urban economies
4. Historical, landscape and architectural urban issues
5. Governing the cities

HUB5 Digital & Technological Transformation:

Activities should preferably be connected to some of the areas of interest and work identified by members of  the current hub council, such as:  

1.      Open science.

2.      Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Robotics.

3.      Ethics and power, digital divides, inclusion (equity).

4.      Data science and democracy.

5.      Digitalization and public space.

6.    Personal and professional development (skills, career, personal development)

7.      Higher education and digital transformation, Innovative pedagogies.

8.      Digitalization and sustainability.

9.      Digitalization, health and well-being.

Participants: Profiles and required number of participants

The applicant/coordinator of the proposal should be a UNIL professor or maître d’enseignement et de recherche.

Participants profiles:

• CIVIS universities’ academics 
• UNIL academics :
  • NB : Only UNIL professors and MER (maître d'enseignement et de recherche) can apply as main applicants. Other researchers can be mentioned and can participate to the activities.

In the proposal is expected to mention at least one UNIL academic staff member and two other academics from different CIVIS universities (= minimum 3 academics from 3 universities).

Language of the project 

• The suggested primary language of collaboration is English or/and French.

With seven major languages spoken in the alliance and English as lingua franca, CIVIS invests in linguistic diversity, a key issue in the globalization process. Therefore, projects in one of the CIVIS member-universities’ languages are eligible.

You can submit your project proposal in English or French.

Funding

UNIL will finance travel cost and cost of stay of academics employed by CIVIS universities.

Each project can receive a total funding up to 8 000 CHF. The amount will depend to the nb of participants and duration of mobilities. The amount will not be transferred to third parties but UNIL CIVIS Team will pay catering on UNIL campus and reimburse participants’ travel tickets and hotel during the activities.

Eligible costs: 

• Travel costs (approx. 340 CHF per travel):
  • Academics from CIVIS universities to UNIL campus;
  • UNIL academics to one of the CIVIS universities cities.
• Cost of stay (meals, hotel, local transportation - approx.. 170 CHF per day of activity + 2 days of travel):
  • Academics from CIVIS universities staying in Lausanne;
  • UNIL academics staying in CIVIS partners’ cities. 

Expenditures will be reimbursed on real cost incurred based on supporting documents (i.e invoices). The costs incurred should be compliant with UNIL travel policy and regulations.

Projects Selection

The proposals will be evaluated by a Selection Committee at UNIL composed by:

• Vice-Rector on External Relations & Scientific Communication;
• Vice-Rector on Education;
• UNIL Hubs members;

The main evaluation criteria will be the following:

• Geographical balance (nb of CIVIS colleagues involved);
• Relevance of the project (related to: Hub challenges, innovative pedagogies, scientific content);
• Sustainability of the project (in terms of alignment with CIVIS objectives and UNIL educational strategy).

Projects Reporting

After project approval, the agenda/programme and dates of activities with the list of participants should be communicated to civis@unil.ch at least 3 weeks in advance.

After the activities incurred, a report of the meetings and attendance sheets signed by the participants should be sent to civis@unil.ch .

Contacts

For more information on this call, applicants can contact: 

• UNIL Institutional Coordinator, Mr Simone Guccione,civis@unil.ch