The main applicant for this call must be academic staff with a permanent appointment at Leiden University. Two co-applicants are to be involved: the first co-applicant is a colleague from another disciple, at another faculty. The second co-applicant must be a colleague from an academic institution on the preferred partner list. 

Early career researchers should be involved and can be a main applicant, but professional services can only be involved in a secondary or supporting capacity. For information about terminology or definitions, please see the FAQ.

1. Proposals will need to fulfil the following criteria. Not meeting these criteria will result in exclusion from the selection process.Proposals must involve at least one academic priority partner. This partner is a co-applicant. The role of this co-applicant is to be clearly explained. Please click here for the list with Leiden’s priority partners per region, or see the application form.
2. Proposals should be interdisciplinary. This should be achieved internally, through involvement of colleagues at other faculties. Additionally, interdisciplinarity could be underlined through selecting colleagues from academic partners from different academic disciplines.
3. Proposals fall within one of the university’s profiling themes. The list of themes is a dropdown on the application form.
4. Projects should involve early career researchers (i.e. current PhDs, PostDocs or within 8-year after completion PhD).
5. Main applicants can only apply once for this specific call. Last year’s applicants that were not successful are able to apply for this year’s call. Last year's grantees are exempt from this call round.
6. The application form is filled in completely, the terms and conditions are accepted, and the requested budget and planning are within the scope of the funding (max. €15.000, to be spent between 1/1/2026 and 31/12/2026.

For each region, a number of academic institutions have been designated as preferred partners for LUGF seed funding projects. The list of partner institutions can be viewed here.

We encourage applicants to think about the strategic value and long-term prospectives of their proposed projects. Thoughts and expectations will be requested on the application form but will not be judged before selection. They will, however, be potential handholds for the region coordinators and grant development team to connect the proposed activities to university wide initiatives or grant capture possibilities.

You could think of:

• Connecting to the networks with an international focus: Una Europa, LERU, Coimbra Group and LDE Global aim to encourage research collaboration with the Majority World. It could be valuable to connect to their activities or colleagues at member institutions to multiply outreach and impact.
• Contribute to other Leiden University initiatives or collaborations, like the The Hague Global Futures Hub and the partnership with the University of Birmingham.
• Involve other academic partners: if you aim to build towards external grant capture, you could take a head start by involving more than one academic partner. For EU projects, it is obligatory to involve partners from other Member States and connecting multiple partners in the regions could increase opportunities for local grant capture.
• Some of the priority partners may be able to co-fund (in cash or in kind). You could check through your international colleagues or connect to your region’s coordinator to discuss possibilities. 
• Involve non-academic partners: Leiden University has a large local network of non-academic partners. These include national funders (like Fapesp or CSC), municipal, provincial or national governmental partners (such as the Indonesian Ministry of Religious Affairs), NGO’s and think tanks (for instance AERC, NUVONI, ACET) and multilateral organisations (like the Asian Development Bank). 
• Connect to Leiden’s institutes abroad: Leiden has local representation in Jakarta, Rabat, Cairo and Istanbul. We are also involved in the LDE Hub in Nairobi. Colleagues in these offices could play a valuable role connecting the project to local initiatives and non-academic partners.

You can apply by filling in the application form before 23:59 CET on Tuesday 30 September 2025.

Please note that without a completed form, including accepting the terms and conditions for award, your proposal will not be considered for the selection process.

Should you have any questions about definitions, process, requirements or implementation, please read the FAQ contact us at globalfund@bb.leidenuniv.nl.

After the call closes, all applications will be checked for the set requirements: priority partner as co-applicant, thematic focus aligned with the university’s profiling, interdisciplinarity, involvement of early career researchers and complete application. We will also be checking if the main applicant has not submitted multiple applications. 

In case of multiple applications, both proposals shall be eliminated from participation in the lottery. Additionally, if the same proposal is filled by multiple, different main applicants, all proposals shall be eliminated.

This primary selection will be executed by the region coordinators, LUGF programme manager and if needed, internationalization staff at the faculty. This depends on the number of proposals received. The requirements can be judged objectively [yes/no], but to ensure impartiality, region coordinators or faculty advisors will not check their own region’s or faculty’s proposal. The evaluation shall be executed under the four-eyes principle as well.

If there are more than 3 eligible proposals per region, we proceed to a lottery. All eligible proposals will be participating in a draw to provide the final selection. Winners shall be drawn according to region, so the regions are not competing internally.

All eligible proposals will be published before the final selection takes place. This means that a list of all proposals, with contact details of Leiden’s main applicant and an abstract, will be published online. These proposals are all considered contenders for the seed funding and reserve the recognition for their efforts. We also believe that this openness provides a platform for collaborations through other means than the seed funding and we hope that initiatives could connect over the content and aims of the proposed projects.

Awarded proposals will be expected to adhere to the terms and conditions as described in this document. In short, this will mean that awardees:

• Declare that they filled in the application for truthfully
• Accept a lumpsum of €15.000 to be spent between 1/1/2026 and 31/12/2026 in line with the proposal.
• Accept that they should take the required steps to ensure knowledge safety and ethical standards are met.
• Accept to share and store data according to the GDPR regulations and conform open science standards.
• Accept that they are contacted by the region coordinators to discuss the long-term prospectives of the projects and agree to collaborate with them.
• Accept that they are obliged to provide a news article for the faculty website at the end of the project (Q4, 2026)
• Accept that they are obliged to provide a progress report (Q2, 2026) and a final report (Q1, 2027
• Accept that they are obliged to participate in the evaluation of the seed fund programme.
• Accept that they cannot participate in the 2026 call with the project still ongoing
• Agrees to be involved in evaluation procedures of future seed funding calls if needed.

After the lottery, awardees will receive an email requesting a SAP-number for the financial settlement. This SAP-number should be provided before Monday 17 November 2025, in order to ensure timely administration and transfer.