Global Evolutionary Biology Initiative

Recent years have seen the rise of research interest in evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy in regions out­side of the tra­di­tion­al strong­holds of the dis­cip­line (i.e., West­ern and North­ern Europe, USA, Canada, Aus­tralia, New Zea­l­and and Japan). In some non-tra­di­tion­al regions the fund­ing situ­ation for research in evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy has also been improv­ing, lead­ing to a nas­cent and grow­ing com­munity of research­ers. ESEB aims to foster the devel­op­ment and integ­ra­tion of loc­al evol­u­tion­ary research com­munit­ies and their links with the evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy com­munity in Europe.

In 2013 ESEB estab­lished the Glob­al Train­ing Ini­ti­at­ive (GTI), which has been suc­cess­ful in instig­at­ing and con­trib­ut­ing to the organ­iz­a­tion and fund­ing of work­shops for young research­ers in col­lab­or­a­tion with loc­al evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy com­munit­ies. While the GTI focused on train­ing, it has become clear that ESEB can con­trib­ute to the fos­ter­ing of evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy in addi­tion­al ways.

To address this need we have trans­formed the GTI into a new ESEB ini­ti­at­ive, the Glob­al Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy Ini­ti­at­ive (GEBI) which can provide fin­an­cial, organ­isa­tion­al and stra­tegic sup­port as required. In addi­tion to focus­ing on train­ing activ­it­ies, the GEBI can also:

• con­trib­ute to the organ­isa­tion of loc­al con­gresses, through e.g. the trans­fer of organ­iz­a­tion­al exper­i­ence, and help with acquir­ing invited speakers
• facil­it­ate increased vis­ib­il­ity and glob­al con­nec­tions for region­al soci­et­ies, by provid­ing sup­port to hold sym­po­sia hos­ted in the spe­cif­ic region, includ­ing par­ti­cipants from the region as well as oth­er ESEB mem­ber countries
• facil­it­ate net­work­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to strengthen inter­ac­tions across loc­al evol­u­tion societies
• con­trib­ute to the organ­isa­tion of loc­al Uni­ver­sity edu­ca­tion cur­ricula, through e.g. the trans­fer of organ­isa­tion­al exper­i­ence, teach­ing con­tri­bu­tion, resource shar­ing (books, exper­i­ment­al kits and videos, etc)
• sup­port oth­er requests from loc­al com­munit­ies com­pat­ible with this ini­ti­at­ive and its goals

GEBI now wel­comes applic­a­tions to sup­port new pro­jects in line with its aims (examples include meet­ings to estab­lish or strengthen loc­al research­er net­works, con­duct­ing hands-on work­shops to dis­sem­in­ate new tools or meth­ods, or devel­op­ing cur­ricula for teach­ing). The dead­line for the cur­rent call is Novem­ber 25, 2022. More inform­a­tion about the applic­a­tion pro­ced­ure is giv­en below.

To facil­it­ate sup­port of loc­al meet­ings and teach­ing, the GEBI Com­mit­tee plans to build a data­base of ESEB mem­bers who are inter­ested in volun­teer­ing as speak­ers or tutors, pro bono. If you would con­sider join­ing GEBI-sup­por­ted activ­it­ies from time to time, we kindly ask you to fill in this short form. We will later be shar­ing this inform­a­tion (i.e., your insti­tu­tion­al email, research top­ics, and pre­ferred type of par­ti­cip­a­tion) with col­leagues that are organ­ising GEBI activ­it­ies, when needed. The inform­a­tion related to pop­u­lar sci­ence meet­ings will be passed on to ESE­B’s Out­reach Com­mit­tee, which coordin­ates this kind of activity.

https://forms.gle/wvbZ7ArD6gbr4Gib6

The Glob­al Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy Ini­ti­at­ive is man­aged by a com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of Deepa Agashe (Nation­al Centre for Bio­lo­gic­al Sci­ences, Ban­galore, India; co-chair), Leonardo Baci­ga­lupe (Uni­ver­sid­ad Aus­tral, Chile), Josefa González (Insti­tute of Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy, Bar­celona, Spain), Jac­ob Höglund (Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, Sweden), Simone Immler (Uni­ver­sity of East Anglia, Nor­wich, UK), Tadeusz Kawecki (Uni­ver­sity of Lausanne, Switzer­land), Yan­nis Michala­kis (CNRS, Mont­pel­li­er, France), Nina Slet­vold (Uppsala Uni­ver­sity, Sweden; co-chair), Mehmet Somel (Middle East Tech­nic­al Uni­ver­sity, Ank­ara, Tur­key) and Elio Sucena (Insti­tuto Gul­ben­ki­an de Ciência/Faculdade de Ciên­cias da Uni­ver­sid­ade de Lis­boa, Portugal).

Con­tact:

ESEB Office – office@eseb.org

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Call 2022

ESEB aims to foster the devel­op­ment and integ­ra­tion of loc­al evol­u­tion­ary research com­munit­ies from regions out­side of the tra­di­tion­al strong­holds of the dis­cip­line and their links with the evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy com­munity in Europe. To address this need, we recently trans­formed the Glob­al Train­ing Ini­ti­at­ive, mainly focused on sup­port­ing train­ing activ­it­ies, to the Glob­al Evol­u­tion­ary Bio­logy Ini­ti­at­ive (GEBI) which can provide fin­an­cial, organ­isa­tion­al and stra­tegic sup­port as required (see above).

GEBI now wel­comes applic­a­tions to sup­port new pro­jects in line with its aims (examples include meet­ings to estab­lish or strengthen loc­al research­er net­works, con­duct­ing hands-on work­shops to dis­sem­in­ate new tools or meth­ods, or devel­op­ing cur­ricula for teaching).

The dead­line for this call is Novem­ber 25 2022.

Applic­a­tions should include a con­cise (up to two pages) descrip­tion of the pro­posed activ­ity and a detailed budget (in par­tic­u­larly spe­cify­ing how the reques­ted GEBI con­tri­bu­tion will be used). Actions fos­ter­ing evol­u­tion­ary bio­logy in the long term are par­tic­u­larly appre­ci­ated, and applic­ants are encour­aged to describe how their pro­pos­als may reach this long-term object­ive. Max­im­al allow­ance is 10,000 euros/project.

Actions based in West­ern and North­ern Europe, USA, Canada, Aus­tralia, New Zea­l­and and Japan are not eli­gible for sup­port by GEBI. Actions that are already covered by oth­er ESEB initiatives/committees, e.g. out­reach activ­it­ies or travel grants to indi­vidu­al students/researchers for attend­ing work­shops or con­fer­ences are not eli­gible for sup­port by GEBI.

Pro­pos­als should be addressed to office@eseb.org (sub­ject: GEBI call for pro­pos­als 2022). 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!