Radboud Horizon Europe Stories – successful roll-out of Radboud trainings on proposal writing in preparation for upcoming Horizon Europe deadlines
Apart from tailored and individual proposal writing support, Radboud grant support team launched trainings for researchers to show how to write a collaborative proposal with top-down requirements under Horizon Europe.
The training portfolio was developed by a team of grant advisors from Radboud University and Radboudumc with the content tailored to the expertise of various faculties, institutes and interdisciplinary initiatives and in the form of concise online sessions, considering the COVID-19 situation.
The structure of training exercises enables participants to learn the logic of proposal writing under Horizon Europe, starting from the call analysis and following all the sections of the proposal template. Therefore, the knowledge gained can be applied to future proposals on any topics. The exercises are interactive, giving room for discussions, questions, individual and group work.
In the pilot training season (April-July 2021) due to popular demand 10 trainings on proposal writing under Horizon Europe for over 150 participants were organized. Several training participants are working now on their proposals for the first Horizon Europe deadlines in autumn 2021.
The next trainings will start in October, everyone is welcome to join beginner, intermediate or advanced levels. We have collected feedback from participants of different groups in order to encourage more Radboud researchers register for the next training season.
“I found the workshop on collaborative projects very helpful and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to other researchers. I found the exercises that we had to do collectively particularly useful because they helped us understand how to read calls in such a way that we would respond exactly to what is required” Laszlo Muntean, Assistant Professor at Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH)
“It was well structured with information, and the approach of using a specific document and go through the information belonging to each "section" was super enlightening. I think you should definitely build upon this approach. Very hands on!” Jana Vyrastekova, Associate Professor, Nijmegen School of Management.
“I would encourage any researcher to do the trainings. I attended a Horizon workshops and trainings, and you were able to reduce a daunting Horizon call about into its essence and better to understand chunks. I highly appreciated the trainings”, Johan Karremans, Associate Professor, Behaviours Science Institute.
“I particularly enjoyed the training sessions because they are very practical, targeted and concrete: the grant advisor very clearly explained the purpose of each section and how they are interconnected. By working with explicit examples, the grant advisor broke down the complex proposal forms and showed the logical structure behind it”, Willemijn Doedens, Postdoctoral researcher, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour.
Through training sessions, Radboud grant support team wants to show our researchers that Horizon Europe applications are not overly complicated and bureaucratic. Radboud scientists can successfully submit competitive proposals with the right support and timely preparation. Reach out for support at collaborate@ru.nl.