List of members

KU Leuven is an international community where innovative research forms the basis of all our academic programmes. Across the university, driven researchers and curious students continually gain new insights and use their knowledge to tackle the foremost challenges of our time.

KU Leuven will celebrate its 600th anniversary in 2025, making it one of Europe’s oldest universities. Our institution has the double honour of being the oldest university in the Low Countries and the oldest extant Catholic university in the world.

Today, KU Leuven accommodates 50,000 students, spread across the various campuses in Leuven and elsewhere in Flanders. The University and University Hospitals Leuven each employ almost 10,000 people. For research, KU Leuven ranks among the world’s finest. KU Leuven has become a cosmopolitan institution in a rapidly changing urban environment. Its unique profile reconciles cutting-edge science with quality of life and openness to talent.

KU Leuven is dedicated to education and research in nearly all fields. Its fifteen faculties offer classes and degree-granting academic programmes, whilst research activities are organised by departments and research groups. These faculties and departments are clustered into three thematic groups: Humanities and Social Sciences, Science, Engineering and Technology (SET), and Biomedical Sciences. Each of these groups sponsors its own doctoral school for organising and awarding doctoral degrees.

KU Leuven boasts thirteen campuses, spread across 10 cities in Flanders.

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Maastricht University is the most international university in the Netherlands and, with 18,000 students and 4,400 employees, is still growing. The university stands out for its innovative education model, international character and multidisciplinary approach to research and education.

Thanks to its high-quality research and study programmes as well as a strong focus on social engagement, UM has quickly built up a solid reputation. Today it is considered one of the best young universities in the world.

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Founded in 1919, shortly after the establishment of independent Czechoslovakia, Masaryk University and its academic community have significantly contributed to the development of free and democratic Czechoslovakia.

Its activities are rooted in and guided by the values of respect, freedom and responsibility.
Today, Masaryk University with its highly international and dynamic environment, continues in the esteemed tradition of playing significant roles across all three main domains of higher education institutions – education, excellent research, and societal contribution and service to the community. The university comprises ten faculties and two research institutes, employing over seven thousand employees, and offers over 150 study programmes, with 20 per cent of these taught in English. It educates 33,000 students, including 7,000 from abroad, who all enjoy studying in Brno – one of the most popular student cities in the world.

It continuously improves its standings in international university rankings and, in the 2023 QS Sustainability Rankings, it was placed as the best of all Czech higher education institutions. Principles of sustainable development are integral to the university’s culture.

Masaryk University is dedicated to educating future leaders and stands as a leader and trendsetter in education, research, and culture. As a dynamic, growing and socially responsible higher education institution, it also prides itself on being a responsible and attractive employer, earnestly upholding principles of transparency, equality and non-discrimination. The university supports its employees in achieving their professional goals while also promoting a healthy a work-life balance.

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Within Horizon Europe, there are so-called National Contact Points (NCPs) – dedicated research consulting bureaus – which provide support and guidance in preparing proposals and project realisation. The EU funded project “Net4Society” is the international network of National Contact Points for Cluster 2, “Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society”.

The main goal of Net4Society is both to improve the quality of consulting and to support researchers in submitting successful proposals in this funding area as well as to increase the visibility of SSH research. National Contact Points are available to applicants in all EU member states and many other countries. They provide individual guidance and support in the application for European research funding for free.

Net4Society was originally founded in 2008 during the 7th European Research Framework Programme (FP7, 2007-2013) as the network of National Contact Points for Socio-Economic Sciences and the Humanities (SSH). Since 2008, Net4Society has been increasing the quality of consulting in the field of social sciences and humanities and currently for SC6, through capacity building and networking measures. Currently, over 80 NCPs in 59 countries in Europe and beyond are part of the network.

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The Network brings together 25 Institutes for Advanced Study across Europe. It was created in 2004 to stimulate a dialogue on IAS practices and possible forms of cooperation. Within the whole network, more than 500 researchers are hosted every year for up to one full academic year.

NetIAS members share the objective of creating international and multidisciplinary learning communities. This openness and the freedom the fellows enjoy for their researches serve to promote scientific and intellectual exchanges. The fellows are released from their usual teaching and research obligations and pursue their project in a privileged environment, that stimulates reflexion and innovation.  IAS tend to break from the intellectual routines, thus fostering the emergence of new perspectives, approaches and paradigms.

While sharing a common vision concerning the freedom of research, and representing an alternative to the national institutions of higher education and research, the IAS offer a considerable diversity in terms of fellowship conditions: individual or collective fellowships; invitations or open calls for applications; one academic year residencies or shorter periods. Furthermore, their scientific policies are characterized by different thematic or geographical orientations, a diverse openness to natural and hard sciences, or a special commitment to promoting early career researchers.

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NORCE is an independent research institute that conducts research for both public and private sectors, to facilitate informed and sustainable choices for the future.

NORCE delivers research and innovation in energy, health care, climate, the environment, society and technology. Solutions address key challenges for society and contribute to value creation on the local, national and global levels. NORCE contributes to the adaptation of industry and business – in conjunction with businesses and universities, clusters and centres.

In addition, NORCE has an important role in research-based renewal of the public sector. We are represented throughout Norway. Our large local presence enables close collaboration with unique centres of excellence, as well as the business community and public authorities. This is all beneficial to research. NORCE is also represented in Brussels with an EU-office. The Head of Office is Sumathi Subramaniam.

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NTNU is an international oriented university with headquarters in Trondheim and campuses in Gjøvik and Ålesund.

NTNU has a main profile in science and technology, a variety of programmes of professional study, and great academic breadth that also includes the humanities, social sciences, economics, medicine, health sciences, educational science, architecture, entrepreneurship, art disciplines and artistic activities. 

NTNU has five strategic research areas: Civil security, Ocean & Coast, Community, Energy, and Health & Life science. 

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OPERAS is a distributed Research Infrastructure (RI) for open scholarly communication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). Its mission is to coordinate and federate resources in Europe to efficiently address the scholarly communication needs of European researchers in the field of SSH.

OPERAS' aim is to make Open Science a reality for research in the SSH and achieve a scholarly communication system where knowledge produced in the SSH benefits researchers, academics, students and more generally the whole society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.

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The University of Oulu is an international science university that creates new knowledge, well-being and innovations for the future through research and education. The University of Oulu, founded in 1958, is one of the largest and most multidisciplinary universities in Finland.

Our educational mission is to provide higher education based on research, and to educate youth to serve society and humanity. The overall aim is to further improve the quantitative and qualitative results and impact of education. 

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The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the leading Slovenian research institution. It has a multidisciplinary character; in addition to the humanities, its spheres of research also cover the natural and social sciences.  It consists of 18 research institutes throughout the country and has more than 350 employees, roughly 300 of whom are researchers.

ZRC SAZU conducts basic research across a range of fields, included natural, earth, and spatial sciences (palaeontology, geology, biology, zoology, botany, karst sciences, geomorphology, natural risks, hydrology, climatology, environmental protection, earth observation, and geographical information systems), and the social sciences and humanities (demography, sociomedicine, anthropology, geography, philosophy, aesthetics, ethnomusicology, musicology, ethnology, linguistics, digital humanities, literary studies, archaeology, history, cultural history, art history, and dialectology.

ZRC SAZU has its own publishing house and bookstore. The ZRC Publishing House publishes more than 50 book series ranging from the strictly scientific to works of general interest and nonfiction, and many scientific journals.

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