Research Newsletter - Issue 105: Spotlight

Erasmus+ is the EU’s programme to support education, training, youth, and sport in Europe. A wide range of activities across different sectors can be funded through its calls for transnational collaborative projects, from classroom practice to EU policy development. Its budget for 2021-2027 is approximately €26.2 billion.

The Erasmus+ programme is

a good source of funding for research in innovative teaching methods, and for a wide range of topics within teaching and learning, often not funded by any other programme, including national and European education policy development,
a driver of valuable trans-sectoral opportunities, for example for working in the public sector and civic society space, and with an important global reach too, and
a key element of DCU’s research activity & strategy, as it is DCU's 5th highest source of external funding for research.

How to apply in 2026

The 2026 Erasmus+ call for proposals will be launched in November 2025. Now is the best time to begin to shape ideas for a project and to develop networks for preparing a proposal in the coming year.

Support for your application

Guidance and information on the Erasmus+ programme is provided by DCU’s Erasmus+ Development Officer Dr Sophie Ball. 1-1 meetings can be arranged at any time of the year to discuss ideas for a project, for support with finding partners, or for a general overview of the Erasmus+ programme. She runs events throughout the year to support staff to submit successful funding applications. Past presentations and other resources are on DCU’s Erasmus+ webpage .

A series of monthly Grant Writing Workshops is currently being run by the Research Development Officers; details and registration information for forthcoming sessions can be found on the Events page of this month's newsletter, or contact your Faculty RDO.

For further information please contact Dr Sophie Ball, Erasmus+ Development Officer, at sophie.ball@dcu.ie.

The ENHANCE Project

At this mid-year point in the Erasmus+ calendar, while we wait in anticipation for the results of proposals submitted so far under a wide range of Erasmus+ 2025 calls, we focus on the successful development of one project:

The ENHANCE project “Empowering Higher Education Through Citizen Science and Innovative Future-oriented Learning Strategies” is an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership that encourages citizen science and innovative learning strategies. It is working to build the skills of European researchers to authentically involve citizens in research.

Aishling Silke and Dr Valesca Lima

The project is coordinated by an inter-faculty team at DCU. The ENHANCE project PIs are Aishling Silke (School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education) and Dr. Valesca Lima (School of Law and Government). They are on the forefront of establishing a Futures Workshop Citizen Science Network to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, experiences, and best practices in citizen science. ENHANCE employs Futures Workshops to encourage dialogue and stimulate imagination, breaking the mindset that limits the envisioning of alternative solutions to 21st-century challenges.

Now in its second year, the project activities highlight the potential of the Futures Workshop method and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to support citizen participation in democratic discussions on environmental issues, aiming to create alternative futures. The PIs work closely together with the five ENHANCE partners, Kauno Technologijos Universitetas (KTU, Lithuania), Linköping Universitet (LiU, Sweden), Tampere University (TU, Finland), Universidade de Aveiro (AU, Portugal), and Universiteit Twente (UT, Netherlands).

In October 2024, the ENHANCE project team hosted the Autumn School at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, where researchers participating in the project were trained in the Futures Workshop methodology. This month, the team will host the ENHANCE Summer School in KTU, Lithuania, where project participants will share their experiences in running Futures Workshops. You can follow the ENHANCE news on the project website and on LinkedIn.

European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU)

Each of the ENHANCE partners are members of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU), a network of 12 universities from 12 different European countries and Mexico with collective emphasis on innovation, creativity, and societal impact. The 12 European ECIU members are now part of the ECIU University, funded through the Erasmus+ European Universities Initiative which funds alliances of European universities to develop new and innovative ways of organising education and international cooperation.

ECIU has just launched a new Seed Programme Call to initiate new or strengthen existing research collaborations, details of which are on the Funding Opportunities page of this month's newsletter.