Congress Attendance Aid Grant

The grant aims to ensure equal oppor­tun­it­ies at the 30th European Meet­ing of PhD Stu­dents in Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy (EMPSEB) or the ESEB con­gress in August 2025 in Bar­celona, Spain.

The grant aims to achieve this by increas­ing the attend­ance of under­rep­res­en­ted groups, primar­ily, but not solely, care­giv­ing women (who due to high­er costs of child­care are often pre­ven­ted from attend­ing), through pos­it­ive dis­crim­in­a­tion. The grant provides sti­pends of fin­an­cial aid for sci­ent­ists to help with the addi­tion­al costs borne privately due to respons­ib­il­it­ies for depend­ents when attend­ing one of the above men­tioned meet­ings. For example, sti­pends can cov­er depend­ent care or per­son­al travel expenses. Applic­ants may request between 250 to 500 € for EMPSEB attend­ance and between 250 to 750 € for ESEB attend­ance. High­er amounts are awar­ded to those trav­el­ling fur­ther or to those from coun­tries with less access to funding.

Please note that this grant is dis­tinct from the ESEB Con­fer­ence Travel Award, which is designed to help young research­ers who are pro­fes­sion­ally based in low income coun­tries with the travel costs to attend the meet­ing and is NOT meant for oth­er under-rep­res­en­ted groups or to sup­port addi­tion­al costs due to caring for depend­ents when attend­ing the meeting. 

DEADLINE: 31st Janu­ary 2025

ELIGIBILITY

  • Applic­ants must be ESEB mem­bers (for becom­ing a mem­ber of ESEB please vis­it our mem­ber­ship page.
  • Applic­a­tions can be sub­mit­ted by sci­ent­ists at any stages of their pro­fes­sion­al career (e.g., under­gradu­ate, Mas­ters and PhD stu­dents, postdocs, and lecturers).
  • Applic­ants must explain expli­citly how their attend­ance will increase equal oppor­tun­it­ies at the society.
  • Applic­ants must present either an oral com­mu­nic­a­tion or a poster at the respect­ive meet­ing to be eli­gible for the award. This will be veri­fied before the reim­burse­ment, but no proof that a poster or talk is accep­ted is neces­sary at the applic­a­tion stage. Please note that being chosen for a travel award does not guar­an­tee accept­ance of a poster or talk at the conference.
  • Applic­ants must detail how they intend to use the grant. Eli­gible costs include, but are not lim­ited to: child­care on site, child­care at home, extra care at home for depend­ents, extra travel costs for babysit­ter (grand­par­ents) etc.
  • The sti­pend will be paid out as a flat rate of 250 € (in cer­tain cases up to 500 €) after the con­gress when con­firm­a­tion of attend­ance & present­a­tion is provided.

HOW TO APPLY

The applic­a­tion should be no more than 2 pages long and include:

  • Name of the applicant
  • ESEB mem­ber­ship number
  • An explan­a­tion of how attend­ance at the meet­ing improves equal oppor­tun­it­ies at ESEB
  • An explan­a­tion of how attend­ance at the meet­ing will fur­ther the attendant’s pro­fes­sion­al goals
  • Itemised budget in Euro
  • CV

Please sub­mit the applic­a­tion as a single PDF file by email to Ute Friedrich at the ESEB office (office@eseb.org; sub­ject: CAA grant 2025) and take care to lim­it the size of attach­ments (total < 10 MB) in any one email.

We will acknow­ledge receipt of all applic­a­tions with­in a week. If you have not received our con­firm­a­tion by then, please con­tact the ESEB office again!