Support programmes
With our financial resources we support individual researchers and research teams with personal fellowships and project funding.
All about support programmes
PhD Fellowship fundamental research
This fellowship supports researchers who have recently graduated and aim to pursue an independent PhD fundamental research project.
Status
Open
03/03/2025
Duration
4 jaar
No extension possible
In association with
Announcement of results
03/10/2025
Objective
With the PhD fellowship program fundamental research, the FWO aims to support early-stage researchers in their development into independent researchers by giving them the opportunity to carry out their own scientifically challenging and innovative research project in view of obtaining a PhD.
Thanks to the collaboration and support of Meise Botanic Garden, INBO, VITO and the Flanders Hydraulics Research, the FWO can award additional PhD fellowships fundamental research. More information and conditions can be found on the links under the institutions.As part of the ’Kom op tegen Kanker’ campaign, the FWO awards an additional PhD fellowship fundamental research for the top-ranked candidate in the Med4 - Cancer Research panel.
Thanks to the support of the Demoucelle Parkinson Charity, the FWO can award again the FWO – Demoucelle Parkinson Charity PhD fellowship to a promising young researcher conducting biomedical research on Parkinson's disease. The procedures for participation are outlined here.
Dates
- 05 December 2024: opening call
- 03 March 2025 at 5pm CET: closing call (last application date)
- 12-27 June 2025: (online) preselection meetings
- 30 June 2025: sending out invitations for interview
- 27 August - 26 September 2025: (physical) interviews
- 03 October 2025: announcement of results
- 01 November 2025: start of fellowship
- 15 November 2025: deadline for sending feedback
Characteristics
- Duration of the fellowship: 4 years
- Grant amount (0 years' seniority): €2,460 /month (index 2,0399 from 1/12/2023)
- Bench fee: € 3,720/year
Eligibility
- You must be affiliated to a university in the Flemish Community, the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Leuven or the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Brussels.
- At the start of the fellowship, you must hold a degree that is at least equivalent to a Master's degree that follows a Bachelor's degree and has been awarded by the competent institutions of one of the countries of the EEA or Switzerland.
- If you have a degree certificate issued within the EEA or Switzerland but other than a master’s degree OR you have a degree certificate issued outside the EEA and Switzerland (this also applies to degrees awarded in the UK), then you must obtain one of the following documents at the start of the fellowship:
- An attestation of Naric that proofs your degree is equivalent to the level of a master’s degree awarded by one of the Flemsih universiteis
- (Or) A declaration in which the administration of the university in the Flemish Community confirms that you will be allowed to prepare a doctoral thesis.
- The time span between your Master's degree or equivalent and 01 March 2025 may not be longer than three years.
- You may have a maximum of 18 months of scientific seniority on 1 March 2025.
- You can only apply twice for a PhD fellowship.
- You have not yet benefited from this fellowship, not even in part.
- You agree to the scientific integrity clause.
Procedures
- You prepare your project in collaboration with a promotor at a Flemisch university, the Evangelical Theological Faculty in Leuven or the Faculty of Protestant Theology in Brussels, who is willing to further guide you as a PhD student.
- You submit your application via the online FWO e-portal and choose the expert panel that will evaluate your application.
- The FWO informs your promotor (and any co-promotor) of your application and asks your promotor to submit a letter of recommendation.
- The selected expert panel evaluates your application and, after the preselection meeting, may invite you to the interview.
- If you are invited for the interviews, you will come to the FWO offices and defend your application before the selected expert panel.
- The Board of Trustees makes the final decision on the selection based on the advice of the expert panels that evaluated the applications and interviews. You will receive the results via e-mail and you can also find them on the results page once they have been made public.
Submitting your application
You submit your application online via our E-loket.
Regulations
General Regulations
These regulations apply to any funding offered by the FWO.
Regulations for PhD fellowship – fundamental research
These regulations contain all the conditions, procedures, etc. for applying for and carrying out a PhD fellowship fundamental research at the FWO.
Regulations for Bench Fees of FWO fellows
These regulations contain all information about the bench fees for PhD and Postdoctoral Researchers of the FWO.
Regulations internal and external peer review
These regulations set out the requirements for the composition of the expert panels and the experts’ code of conduct as well as the scoring and selection methodology (decision-making process).
Infosessions
Every year, the FWO provides more information about the new PhD fellowhip call during info sessions at the universities. Registration for one of these info sessions can be done through the universities.
Dates info session for PhD fellowship call 2025:
| Date | University | |
|---|---|---|
| 4/12/2024 | UAntwerpen | |
| 9/12/2024 | VUB | |
| 10/12/2024 | UGent | |
| 11/12/2024 | UHasselt | |
| 12/12/2024 | KU Leuven |
Expertpanels
You choose a panel of experts to evaluate your application. You choose the panel of experts that covers the research topic of your proposal as best as possible. Your choice is important because your chosen panel can always decide that the scope of your application does not fit within their scope. It is therefore best to discuss your choice with your promotor. The FWO is not allowed to give advice on your choice of the panel.
- Check the list of the panels fundamental research thoroughly and the digital brochure.
- For the specifically interdisciplinary panel, you should give special attention to the functional definition of interdisciplinarity and why your research meets this definition. You write this motivation in the panel's motivation section. This is important because the panel will also evaluate your application on the interdisciplinarity component (see score grids).
- We will communicate the composition of the panels for the call 2025 early April 2025 on the expert panels webpage.
Scoring grids
The criteria that panel members will use during the evaluation of your PhD fundamental research application in the preselection and in the interview for the call 2025 can be found hereunder.
Percentiles and study results
In the application forms, you need to specify a percentile. How to do that is explained in the document below.
2nd axis
Study narrative: From call 2024, the application forms will pay additional attention to a qualitative description of the completed study pathway. In the relevant section, applicants should set out why, based on their study pathway, they would be an excellent candidate to engage in cutting-edge research through their proposed PhD project. Applicants may, for example, refer to study results, awards, diplomas or specific courses. This qualitative approach should allow for a broader assessment of the candidate than merely based on study results or percentiles.
Provide us with your diverse researcher profile: The FWO gives ample consideration to diverse researcher profiles and research output in the application forms. It thereby gives researchers the opportunity to demonstrate the construction of their research careers through a range of scientifically relevant activities, skills, experiences and achievements. This is in line with the international evolution away from a one-sided focus on classical output criteria (such as publications, bibliometrics, patents, etc.) and towards a broader view of what science can be and achieve, while respecting the specificity of each discipline. The application forms are aimed to help the researcher demonstrate that versatility. The FWO instructs the panel members to take this into account in the evaluation of your application.
State any obstacles in your research: We recognise within the FWO any possible impact or event that hampered your research or achievements. We encourage you to indicate such impacts in the application form under the career breaks and motivation statement sections.
Interview
After preselection, we will notify candidates of the results of the preselection. You can already find interview dates, information about our interview rooms and an update of the interview guidelines below. We will update the ‘Interview dates’ and ‘Interview guidelines’ documents of call 2025 in early April 2025.
Additional documents
Contact
For questions about the application template or procedure, you can contact your file administrator.
In the event of technical problems with the e-desk: FWOhelpdesk@fwo.be