Travel grants
University of Oulu Graduate school opens a grant call for doctoral researchers in January 2025.
You can apply for travel grant when you travel to national or international conference or course, research visit or trip for data collection, or funding for virtual course or conference when you participate to the event remotely.
The deadline for applications is 26th of January. Online application form opens in January 10th.
Call for travel grants (updated 9 January 2025)
Doctoral researchers of the University of Oulu Graduate School are invited to apply for travel grants for national and international conferences, courses, workshops, research visits, trips for data collection, as well as for virtual conferences and virtual courses. Travel grants may be used to cover travel and accommodation costs and/or conference, course, and workshop registration fees. When awarded a grant to attend a conference, the recipient of the grant must have a poster presentation and/or an oral presentation during the meeting.
In all travelling, one must always follow travel guidelines of University of Oulu as well as possible travel restrictions set by Government of Finland. Doctoral researchers employed by the University must follow the University's guidelines on booking and travelling. Please read the travel guidelines in the Patio.
Conference/course/travel must occur between February 10th and November 30th, 2025 (i.e., departure at the earliest 10.2.2025 and at the latest 30.11.2025).
When applying a travel grant, please note the following guidelines and principles:
- Research visit corresponds to a period of at least one week during which the applicant will carry out research work related to the doctoral training in a research organisation elsewhere in Finland, or abroad. Typically, a research visit to visit the supervisor is not funded.
- If your doctoral training plan has not been accepted in the recommended time (during ca. the first year of doctoral studies), the likelihood of receiving the grant will be reduced.
- You may apply for a travel grant before you (or your presentation) are accepted for a course or a conference: the grant will be cancelled if your participation at the conference or course is not accepted.
- The grant must be used for the purpose for which it is awarded. Changes to the use of the grant (e.g. purpose or travel destination) are not allowed after it has been awarded (for example, funding cannot be used for another conference than the one for which it was originally granted). For well justified reasons, it may be possible to change the travel dates, but the departure must be during 2025. You need to inform UniOGS beforehand of the need to change travelling time.
- Previous travel grants awarded by UniOGS will also be taken into account during the decision process. Typically you cannot get funding in two consecutive calls.
- We recommend that you submit only one application per one application round. As a general rule, we cannot fund more than one trip from the same applicant in a one call.
- Travels to Oulu are not funded.
- In the application you need to specify and justify the budget of the trip in accordance with the instructions in the application form.
The amount of the grant for courses and conferences is determined by the destination of the trip; up to 500 € may be awarded for trips in Finland, 1200 € for trips in Europe and 1700 € trips outside Europe. The amount awarded for research visits and trips for data collection will be decided separately, on a case-by-case basis, maximum 4000 €. Grants are never awarded retroactively: they must be applied for before the trip.
For virtual course or conference the maximum amount of the grant is 500€ and it can be used for registration fee.
The deadline for applying is 26.1.2025 Apply funding using the online application form.
Required attachments to the application:
- A letter of recommendation from your Principal Supervisor, indicating the importance of this trip for your doctoral studies and evaluation of the progress of your doctoral training.
- Invitation letter from receiving organization (research visits)
Note! You can ask your Principal Supervisors to send the letter of recommendation to uniogs (at) oulu.fi or attach the letter of recommendation to your application in Webropol. The letter of recommendation must be sent to UniOGS no later than January 28, 2025, to be considered in the processing of applications.
If needed, we will ask Principal Supervisor for further information on the application (e.g. ranking order of applicants supervised by the same Principal Supervisor).
Incomplete applications, or applications arriving after the deadline, will not be considered. Travel grant recipients will be announced on UniOGS website after the decision. Please note that the UniOGS grants are competitive funding, so unfortunately not all good applications can be supported. We do not give reasons for individual grant decisions.
The Graduate School may occasionally award working grants for finalizing doctoral thesis. In addition, due to travel restrictions in 2021 part of the funding allocated to support travelling to courses and conferences was distributed as working grants. Please see decisions below.