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Seed Funding Opportunity for Circular Economy

Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ recognizes the challenge of transitioning to a circular economy and addresses this theme with the community on circular Economy and Society. The community has the ambition to develop new science and technology solutions for a circular economy, to improve the legal and societal conditions for their implementation and to lay the foundation for a better system understanding of the future circular society through the creation of a vibrant interdisciplinary research community. It fosters (new) collaboration and research initiatives as well as teaching activities in this area throughout the university, to gain national and international recognition for Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ as a key Circular Economy knowledge center.
The CE community wants to generate new initiatives and forms of collaboration, as the transition to a circular economy is by definition interdisciplinary. The current Call for Proposals with a total budget of €100k focuses on new initiatives and an active community of researchers.

Requirements

• Cooperation between researchers from at least 2 faculties. One of the researchers should be connected to the faculties of Geosciences, Beta sciences or Law, Economics and Governance
• The application can focus on all aspects of a circular economy and society, health, energy, consumer behavior, waste flows, production or other circular themes
• New and innovative research (collaboration) that combines certain aspects of technology development, the role of institutions or regulatory instruments and behavioral change in transformation processes to more circularity
• Increasing the national and international visibility of UU research on circular economy aspects and increasing interaction with stakeholders (e.g. joint article aimed at policymakers or decision makers, workshops…)
• New collaborative teaching activities that increase the attention circularity in teaching activities or improve the integration of circular economy strategies into curricula.
• The guideline for funding amount is 25k. In case you want to submit a proposal with a higher requested budget, please motivate why you expect to need >25k.
• The money has to be spent before the end of 2022

Application

The proposal of maximum two pages should be focused of Circular Economy and Society. It must be interdisciplinary and should be proposed by at least one researcher or teachers of one of the participating faculties of the Circular Economy Community. Preferably, the request is proposed by researchers of teachers of more than one faculty, but at least 2 different research groups should be involved. Participation of a researcher from the faculties Social and Behavioural Sciences, Humanities, Medicine and Veterinary Medicine is strongly  encouraged. The proposal should describe the activities and expected outcomes, as well as the role of the seed funding to help the initiative. It should substantiate how it contributes to building the UU presence in the field of Circular Economy and Society. The proposals will be reviewed and selected by the Circular Economy team.

Deadline

Proposals should be submitted by 15 June 2022 to Ernst Worrell at e.worrell@uu.nl.