Types of Funding
To find funding, you first need to define your goal. Do you need to fund your own salary? Go abroad? Start up a collaboration? Buy equipment or do field work? Develop a company based on an invention that came out of the research? Next, find a match between your goal and the many funding opportunities.
Support needed?
For more information on the different types of research grants - and which would fit your research project and career - please contact your local grant advisor.
Individual research grants
Individual research grants usually provide funding for curiosity-driven, bottom-up topics. These grants are made based on the excellence of both the researcher and the research. They vary from small travel and visiting grants to large grants that cover the salaries and material budget for a whole research group.
Prizes
Prizes and awards are given out to acknowledge demonstrated research achievements and impact. Sometimes self-nomination is possible. Prizes are cash payouts. They can be small or substantial (millions of euros).
Collaborative research grants
Collaborative research project grants require cooperation between two or more applicants. Depending on the call, they can be intended for top-down thematic or fixed topics, but may also offer opportunities for curiosity driven research. Collaborative research projects can focus on fundamental research, but can also have a more applied focus, having strong links to, or partly incorporating the making of research results available for economic development and/or societal benefit.
Potential partners include other research organisations, governmental bodies (e.g., cities, provinces, government ministries), NGOs and museums. Collaborative research project grants can vary in size and complexity (from bilateral collaborations to pan-European consortia). Collaborative grants can be interesting for all career stages. In some cases, recipients may also need to contribute towards the costs of the research project, also called co-funding.
Research training grants
These focus on the personal career development of individuals (e.g., postdocs or visiting fellows) or groups. An example of a group would be a consortium of researchers applying to set up a program consisting of multiple individual grant opportunities for individuals (e.g., PhD networks).
Contract research
Research for companies is very narrowly defined. It involves research laid out in a specific project description, with exact deliverables set by the company. Furthermore, the contract usually specifies that the company owns the results of the research. For more information, please contact Luris Business Development.
Funding for education development
The grants discussed above all focus on research. There are also grants that combine research, education and innovation, and offer opportunities for improving the quality of education or setting up international cooperation. For more information and support on education grants, such as Erasmus+ and Comenius, please contact the EduGrants team at the International Relations office.
Funding for valorisation and/or starting a company
If you have great research results that can be further developed for societal applications and/or commercial products, there are proof-of-concept and seed funds available. For more information and support on valorisation grants, please contact Luris.
Funding support and opportunities
This page is used to collect current and ongoing funding opportunities for researchers within the Leiden Law School. You can find a list of upcoming deadlines. The full list of relevant funding opportunities can be found in this document.
Current opportunities
Call for Junior Fellows: Justice & Migration
Leuven Institute for Advanced Study (LIAS) invites applications for visiting junior fellows within the project ‘Justice and migration’ (13 October – 25 October). The fellowships are intended for advanced Ph.D. students, postdocs or junior faculty members (tenure track). Applicants will be able to participate in expert workshops, discussions and lectures as well as actively engage with the LIAS community. LIAS covers all travel and hotel costs for junior fellows for a stay up to 14 days in Leuven with a maximum of € 1,000 for the total stay.
To apply, please send your application to jelle.zeedijk@lias.eu no later than 13 September 2024. The applications will be reviewed shortly after this date and we will notify you about our decision by 23 September.
Your application should contain:
- a short motivation (max 1 page), explaining how this LIAS project relates with your research and stating your preferred period of visit
- a short academic CV
Deadline: 13 September 2024
Independent Social Research Foundation: First Book Grant for Post-Docs
ISRF supports recent PhD graduates (max. 3 years after PhD) without a permanent salaried position in their effort to turn their PhD thesis into a publishable book. Researchers may apply from across the social sciences and the humanities. The awards are intended to provide a research stipend (max. €41,500) for a period of up to twelve months, plus appropriate research expenses. For more information, see here: First Book Grant (FBG2) | Deadline: 1st November 2024.
Deadline: 1 November 2024, 18:00.
Seed Funding Call 2024
The Leiden University Global Fund awards seed funding to support regional collaborative initiatives. The funding is divided across the four priority regions: Africa, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America. You can apply for project funding up to a maximum of €15,000 per region. This can also be supplementary to existing local funding.
Complete applications can be submitted via globalfund@bb.leidenuniv.nl no later than 17.00 hours on Friday 31 October 2024.