We are pleased to announce the Eighth International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd’22), as a hybrid conference (in-person and virtual conference, simultaneously). Every year, HEAd brings together around 250 participants from more than 50 countries to exchange ideas, experiences and research results related to the preparation of students, teaching/learning methodologies and the organization of educational systems.      The HEAd'22 conference will be held on June 14-17, 2022 on the Faculty of Business Administration and Management of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), which has been recently ranked as the best technical university in Spain by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2021.   The program committee encourages the submission of articles that communicate applied and empirical findings of interest to higher education professionals. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following topic areas: Innovative materials and new tools for teaching Educational technology (e.g., virtual labs, e-learning) Evaluation and assessment of student learning Emerging technologies in learning (e.g., MOOC, OER, gamification) Scientific and research education Experiences outside the classroom (e.g., practicums, mobility) New teaching/learning theories and models Globalization in education and education reforms Education economics Teaching and learning experiences Entrepreneurship and learning for employment Education accreditation, quality and assessment Competency-based learning and skill assessment Important Dates Submission deadline: February 4, 2022Acceptance notification: April 6, 2022Camera ready due: April 25, 2022Conference dates: June 14-17, 2022 Publications All accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings with a DOI and ISBN number. They will be published in open access by UPV Press and submitted to be indexed in major international bibliographic databases. Previous editions are indexed in Scopus and the Thomson-Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index - Web of Science Core Collection (former ISI Proceedings). Awards The Program Committee will select the winners for the Best Paper and Best Student Paper awards. To be eligible for the best student paper award, the presenting author of the paper must be a full-time student. Submission guidelines Authors from all over the world are invited to submit original and unpublished papers, which are not under review in any other conference or journal. All papers will be peer reviewed by the program committee based on their originality, significance, methodological soundness, and clarity of exposition.   Submitted papers must be written in English and should be in PDF format. They must follow the instructions in the template file, available in Microsoft Word format at: http://www.headconf.org/template.docx   Paper length must be between 4 and 8 pages, incorporating all text, references, figures and tables. Submissions imply the willingness of at least one author to register, attend the conference, and present the paper.   HEAd'22 is using the OCS platform of UPV Press to manage the submissions. This platform provides you with a submissions homepage where you can register your paper submission and make appropriate changes. The submission website is: http://www.headconf.org/submission-instructions/   The organizing committee looks forward to welcoming you all to a fruitful conference with open discussions and important networking to promote high quality education. Read more

The US Embassy Nairobi invites interested applicants to submit proposals from implementing partners for 2022 -2023 English Access Microscholarship Program (Access) in response to the reference Notice of Funding Announcement (NOFO). Due to the uncertain situation with the COVID19 pandemic in Kenya, the Program might be delayed or postponed. There might also be restrictions in numbers of people who can attend public gatherings, travels and curfews hours, which might affect the implementation of the program. In this regard the submitted proposal should have an innovative component to engage Access students both in person and virtually. For virtual programs, proposals should offer creative ideas for remote/online content delivery, online/virtual promotional activities, and virtual participant/audience follow-up.    Background Information  The English Access Microscholarship Program (Access) is a global program supported by the U.S Department of State. Access provides highly motivated economically disadvantaged youth with an opportunity to learn English language skills and enhance leadership through teaching the basics of American culture and values of democratic development and civic engagement. It gives participants skills that may lead to better jobs and educational prospects. The program targets 13 – 20 year old students from underprivileged families to participate in afterschool instructions and intensive sessions. Since its inception in 2004, approximately 198,408 students in more than 95 countries have participated in the Access Program. In Kenya, there are more than 780 Access alumni, many of who are studying at, or have graduated from, top-tier universities throughout the country. The Access program must provide two years of English study, consisting of at least 180 hours of instruction per year.   The goal of the Access Program is to equip bright, talented, economically deserving students with a range of global citizenship skills anchored by the core components of enhanced English language skills and a stronger Kenyan-U.S. cross-cultural understanding. The global citizenship skills aim to build individuals with stronger self-esteem and a keen sense of public service in an increasingly globalized world. Global citizenship skills include, but are not limited to, critical and creative thinking, leadership, information technology, civic outreach, and media literacy. Participants should commit to enroll in classes during the full two year program. Selected participants must be bright, economically-disadvantaged secondary school students with a beginning level of English, ideally in Form 2 at the beginning of the program in January 2022. Students will graduate with certificates of completion from the U.S. Embassy Nairobi at the end of their two-year program.     PROGRAM DESCRIPTION  The Public Diplomacy Section of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi announces an open competition to equip bright, talented, economically deserving students to learn English, develop civic engagement and leadership skills and gain multicultural awareness through teaching the basis of American culture and vales. Project-based and task-based approaches should be employed in order to help learners to understand and work on authentic local and global challenges. The English language component should break from traditional models to deliver a more meaningful, interactive language learning experience centered on the learner. Project-based and experiential approaches should be employed in order to help the learner use English to understand, discuss, and resolve authentic local and global challenges. Enhancement and off-site immersion activities should help extend the language learning experience beyond the classroom walls. Access classrooms should serve as strong educational models for a community. Programs should, where possible, aim at sharing new and relevant practices with English teachers in other schools, especially those from which the Access students are chosen. Other members of the community, including interested administrators, content teachers, and future educators studying at nearby universities, can also be included in outreach efforts. The participants’ parents should also be made aware of what and how the students are learning, and appraised of what they can do at home to encourage their children to learn more effectively. Civic outreach activities should further cement the connection between the Access program and community.    Providers can submit proposals of varying size with a minimum of $50,000 USD and a maximum of $175,000 USD, depending on the Provider’s capability, infrastructure, and geographic spread. The grantee should work with students in Mombasa and/or Isiolo Counties. The project supports the Embassy’s strategic goal of sustaining Kenyan economy to achieve rapid economic growth. Program proposals should include using U.S. exchange program alumni, and the target region is Mombasa and/or Isiolo Counties. Ideal partners include Educational Institutions, non-profit organizations that use innovative methods to reach to economically disadvantaged youths in this region.    U.S. Embassy Nairobi reserves the right to split the project between two or more providers and may request providers to adjust their final proposals and budgets as necessary. All possible costs – instruction, books/materials, transportation, enhancement activities, administration, food and possible accommodation for intensive sessions – should be covered.   For more information about this opportunity or to apply, please visit grants.gov Read more

Background While mathematical modeling approaches have been used to understand malaria epidemiology and thepotential impact of antimalarial interventions for some time, National Malaria Control Programs (NMCPs)across sub-Saharan Africa are showing a growing interest in working with modeling units to shape theirNational Strategic Plans and Global Fund applications, as well to evaluate the ongoing impact of controlprograms. Furthermore, R&D partners in the malaria space are also increasingly working with modelers aspart of the product development process, using quantitative insights to shape target product profiles, plantrials, and understand the market for a given product.At present, many of the malaria modeling units contributing to these efforts are based in academic institutions in the Global North. At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we believe that having local modeling expertise embedded within or easily accessible to NMCPs will improve programs’ uptake of modeling as a strategic planning and evaluation tool, ultimately leading to improved data-driven decisionmaking by NMCPs. However, for this vision to be realized, the malaria modeling ecosystem across subSaharan Africa needs to be strengthened. The Challenge   This RFP seeks innovative approaches to building a stronger malaria mathematical modeling ecosystemin sub-Saharan Africa. We are looking for 1 to 3 years projects that will achieve one or more of the objectives below:• Increasing the number of Ph.D.-trained mathematical modelers with malaria expertise based atsub-Saharan African institutions• Improving NMCP’s understanding of and engagement with modeling approaches as a tool that cansupport strategic planning and/or evaluation work• Connecting malaria Product Development Partners (PDPs) with sub-Saharan African modelers• Bringing together discrete modeling units across sub-Saharan Africa to share expertise• Improving modelers’ access to timely, high-quality data   Funding level: up to USD $1,000,000 per year for each project, with a grant term of 1 to 3 years depending on the scope of the project.   For more information about the opportunity or to apply visit the Grand Global Challenges website. Read more

The purpose of this call for EOI is to identify projects to submit full proposals to develop open and accessible datasets for machine learning applications that will enable natural language processing for languages in sub-Saharan Africa. The ability to communicate and be understood in one’s own language is fundamental to digital and societal inclusion. Natural language processing techniques have enabled critical AI applications that facilitate digital inclusion and improvements in numerous fields, including: education, finance, healthcare, agriculture, communication, and disaster response, among others. Many advances in both fundamental and applied NLP have stemmed from openly licensed and publicly available datasets.However, such open, publicly available datasets are scarce to non-existent for many African languages, and this means the benefits of NLP are not accessible to speakers of these languages. Where relevant datasets do exist, they are often based on religious, missionary, or judiciary texts, leading to outmoded language and bias. There is a need for openly accessible text, speech, and other datasets to facilitate breakthroughs based on NLP technologies for African languages.Lacuna Fund seeks Expressions of Interest (EOIs) from qualified organizations to develop open and accessible training and evaluation datasets for ML applications for NLP in sub-Saharan Africa. The TAP recognizes the importance of datasets that would create significant impact regardless of the number of speakers of the included language, as well as the need for multi-lingual datasets.EOIs may include, but not limited to: Collecting and/or annotating new data; Annotating or releasing existing data; Augmentation of existing datasets in all areas to decrease bias (such as gender bias or other types of bias or discrimination) or increase the usability of NLP technology in low- and middle-income contexts; Creating small, higher-quality benchmark data for NLP tasks in low-resource African languages. While the focus of Lacuna Fund is primarily on dataset creation, annotation, augmentation, and maintenance, proposals may include the development of a baseline model to ensure the quality of the funded dataset and/or to facilitate the use of dataset for socially beneficial applications.   For more information about the opportunity, click here Read more

Nominations are now open for the Yidan Prize 2022 to create a better world through education. The Yidan Prize is the most significant accolade in education. Tell us about the individuals and teams with the greatest potential, and we could help them on their way.Each year, the Yidan Prize is awarded to individuals and teams in two areas: Education Research: The theories of learning—science, psychology, statistics—that can help educators understand different approaches with a methodical lens. Education Development Policy and practice in learning: new methods and ways to make education more widespread—so they can champion techniques that work. We see these prizes—and the events and networks surrounding them—as a way to bring bright minds together to exchange ideas. That’s why the two prizes work in harmony: to build a network of educational experts who’re as strong in research as they are in practical application, in classrooms across the world.For example: we awarded our first Education Research Prize to Professor Carol Dweck: her pioneering work in growth mindset underpins and inspires practice. And as our 2020 Education Development laureates at CAMFED (the Campaign for Female Education) work with marginalized girls in sub-Saharan Africa, they partner with research insitutes to track what’s most effective, who’s benefiting and the costs.Where any individual or team’s work covers both research and development, we welcome two submissions: one for research and one for development.Our prizes are open to teams of up to three. That could be a research group working on a project together, or even several people contributing to the same idea from separate organizations—they don’t have to work together. If you want to nominate a larger team, choose up to three representatives. If a team does win either award, they’ll each get their own individual medal and certificate, and split the cash prize and project fund.   For more information or to nominate someone, please visit the Yidan Prize website Read more

International Fellowships have been in existence since 1917. The program provides support for women pursuing full-time graduate or postdoctoral study in the United States to women who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and who intend to return to their home country to pursue a professional career. A limited number of awards are available for study outside of the U.S. (excluding the applicant’s home country) to women who are members of Graduate Women International (see the list of GWI affiliates). Both graduate and postgraduate studies at accredited U.S. institutions are supported.   Applicants must have earned the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor’s degree by the application deadline and must have applied to their proposed institutions of study by the time of the application. Recipients are selected for academic achievement and demonstrated commitment to women and girls.   Recipients return to their home countries to become leaders in business, government, academia, community activism, the arts or scientific fields.   For more information or to apply, visit the AAUW webiste. Read more

The Study of the U.S. Branch (ECA/A/E/USS), Office of Academic Exchange Programs, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), invites proposal submissions from accredited U.S. post-secondary education institutions, including Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs); community colleges, liberal arts colleges, public and private universities; and other U.S. public and private non-profit organizations meeting the provisions of a 501(c)3 organization (see NOFO, section C. Eligibility Information) for the design and implementation of the new Gandhi-King Scholarly Exchange Initiative to take place over six weeks (inclusive of travel days), virtually and in-person, beginning in summer 2022. The Gandhi-King Scholarly Exchange Initiative will include four components: a) a one-week virtual program component; b.) a two-week academic residency in the United States; c) a two-week experiential learning program in India; and d) a multi-day closing forum.   The Gandhi-King Scholarly Exchange Initiative (Exchange) aims to inspire young leaders from the United States and India to work together to advance civil rights, social justice, and inclusion locally, nationally, and globally by exploring the history and legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Exchange will seek to develop participants’ leadership skills and equip them with the tools and networks to support these endeavors. Approximately 20 undergraduate and graduate students ages 18-25, ten (10) from the United States and ten (10) from India, will participate in the program. The program will draw on the long history of friendship and shared interests between the United States and India, and will provide participants with opportunities for interaction with diverse groups of Americans and Indians. The Exchange will also include opportunities for continued follow-on engagement once participants return to their respective countries. Please see the full announcement for additional information.   For more information or to apply, visit grants.gov Read more

This lecture series will showcase new research into the historical causes and contemporary dynamics of structural poverty, political violence, and large-scale migration in the Red Sea Region. The invited speakers each recognize the continuing importance of longstanding intra-regional connections, and their lectures will shed light on the ways that the coping strategies currently pursued at individual, household, community, and state levels are shaped by the legacies of past practices.   More information can be found at: https://www.zmo.de/en/events/lecture-series/vortragsreihe-im-akademischen-jahr-21-22   To obtain the zoom meeting details, please register at: https://tinyurl.com/5xswd368   This lecture series is organized by Dr. Steven Serels of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin in coordination with RedSeaNet. Read more

This award is conceived to recognise the significant contributions of mid-career to senior scholars in and from the Global South to feminist and gender scholarship in IR broadly defined. Hegemonic Euro- and West-centrism often renders the important work of this category of scholars invisible as study after study from within and without the ISA has shown. Because their subjects, methods, sources, resources, theories and frameworks are evaluated according to standards of scholarship set by the Global North academy, this work is often devalued and invisibilized. At the same time, scholars from the North, feminist or not, draw upon these and other indigenous knowledges, often without acknowledgement, to better situate their own research on those contexts.   Thus, this award addresses the acknowledged tendency for epistemologies of the Global South to be marginalised and unaccounted for both in IR specifically, and global knowledge production in general, and for feminist scholarship to be diminished within the various disciplines. It aims to decentre whiteness, recognise other universes of knowledge, acknowledge the contributions of Global South studies to the global academy, and engender the decolonisation of the field of feminist and gender studies, and of international studies itself.   In doing these, the proposed award enhances the ongoing efforts at inclusion and transformation within the FTGS, complementing existing awards which recognise excellence in feminist research, while at the same time filling a gap in redefining excellence in more global and inclusive terms. Eligibility Scholars in the area of feminist theory and gender studies whose scholarship have extended the frontiers of the discipline and advanced our understanding about Global South contexts in particular Must be from the Global South and based at institutions located there  Must have made significant and demonstrable impact (locally or internationally) on the fields of feminism, gender and international studies, broadly defined, either through scholarship and teaching, mentoring, leadership, policy-relevant work, or any combination of these Targets mid-career to senior scholars specifically Nominees need not be members of ISA and FTGS at the time of nomination, but awardees are expected to become members of ISA and FTGS upon conferment of the award Nominations The award committee eagerly solicits nominations from all across the globe of individuals who meet the above criteria. Given the structural barriers already identified above, the newly-constituted award committee will also actively reach out to individuals, institutions and networks in the Global South for nominations. Nominators may submit (a) a nomination letter highlighting the fitness of the nominee for this award (b) nominee’s abridged CV, no more than 5 pages long, and (c) supporting letters (if available) from persons familiar with the nominee’s scholarship and work. Nomination and supporting letters should not exceed two pages each. Self-nominations are welcome. Prize The recipient will receive a certificate and a cash prize of $800.   How to apply Submit all documents by email to the chair of the award committee, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, yacob-halisoo@babcock.edu.ng. The deadline for nomination this year is October 18, 2021. About the FTGS   The Feminist Theory and Gender Studies section of the International Studies Association brings together scholars who apply feminist theory to International Relations or look at the field through a gender lens. For more information, visit: https://www.isanet.org/ISA/Sections/FTGS. Read more

The Seventh Africa Higher Education and RUFORUM Triennial Conference is set under the theme “Operationalising Higher Education for Innovation, Industrialisation, Inclusion and Sustainable Economic Development in Africa: A call for action” that responds to the urgent needs for the African governments, development partners, private sector and citizenry to take actions to invest in higher education. This Triennial conference is convened with the following objectives: Catalyse investment in Higher Education for human capital development in Africa Promote international linkages and partnerships for excellence in Higher Education Strengthen collaboration and mutual learning to spur innovation and industrialisation for economic transformation in Africa Promote youth employment and skills acquisition for development Strengthen University-Private sector business linkages The First RUFORUM Triennial Conference, the 16th Annual General Meeting and 7th African Higher Education Week will be held in the Republic of Benin at Centre International de Conférences et Palais des Congres de Cotonou, Benin from 6th-10th December 2021. The five-day conference will bring together policy makers including Ministers and Technical Experts, Higher Education Leaders in Africa, development partners, private sector leaders, researchers, innovators, students, and farmer organisations, among others. Approximately 1000 delegates are expected from across the world. Read more

AAP is issuing a call for thought pieces from anywhere in the world that are short, critical reflections of issues around race and ethnicity in higher education institutions as well as other key stakeholder organizations in Africa and the African Diaspora.   The first deadline for thought piece summary (up to 500 words) is Oct. 30, 2021. Summaries must include title, text, author’s name and affiliation.   For the full call for contributions and submission details, visit the link below. https://aap.isp.msu.edu/engage/aap-perspectives/     Read more

The Endangered Archives Programme is now accepting preliminary applications for the next annual funding round – the deadline for submission of preliminary applications is Monday 15 November 2021 at 12 noon GMT. Full details of the application procedures and documentation are available on the EAP website (https://eap.bl.uk/applicants).   The Programme has funded over 430 projects in 90 countries and has helped preserve manuscripts, rare printed books, newspapers and periodicals, audio and audio-visual materials, photographs and artwork. The programme aims to digitise archives at risk of loss or decay and, where appropriate, to relocate the material to a safe local archival home. The digital copies are deposited with the local archival partners, and are all available for researchers to access freely through the British Library website.   This year, we are accepting applications through our online portal between 1st and 15th November. However, in the meantime, we are providing Word and PDF documents for applicants to perfect their preliminary applications before the online submission.   If you know of an archive in a region of the world were resources are limited, we really hope you will apply. If you have any questions regarding the conditions of award or the application process, consult our website (https://eap.bl.uk) or contact them at endangeredarchives@bl.uk Read more