https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/AM_1303Course objectives The student acquires knowledge and insight into: · Designing a competitive transdisciplinary research proposal for a scientific grant; · Important financing mechanisms and the ways in which a research proposal is appraised; · Composing a transdisciplinary research consortium; · Ethical issues and principles relevant to global health research and practice; · The reasoning skills necessary for ethical reflection in this context. Specific course learning objectives By the end of the course, students will be able: · To integrate former knowledge of theoretical frameworks and transdisciplinary research methods into a coherent and competitive research proposal; · To deal adequately with requirements imposed by research funders for a research proposal; · To give feedback to peer students by means of a peer review; · To write a competitive grant proposal; · To present a competitive pitch; · To explain and discuss different ethical concepts and frameworks relevant to global health research and practice; apply the reasoning skills necessary for ethical reflection to conduct global health research responsibly; and effectively justify and integrate ethical considerations into research proposals.Writing research or practice-based proposals for funding is a new reality of not only Global Health, but any health-related discipline. Writing a grant proposal might seem to be very similar to writing an extended research proposal for your internships, but in fact it is very different in many respects. There are a lot of peculiarities in what it takes to write a grant proposal that is eligible and effective, that will be touched upon in this course. You all learned in the first year that a strong methodological design will lead to successful data collection and a good model to relevant interpretations that will be translatable to other environments. The body of knowledge will increase because of your efforts. What is new for grant proposals is to be able to write the research design, while keeping the target audience and the specifics of a particular call in mind. Furthermore, the importance of thinking about and dealing with moral issues in global health research is obvious. In your first internship you have likely experienced how working in global health contexts requires one to appropriately deal with sensitive issues. Perhaps questions came to mind such as: is my research doing more good than harm? Does it respect the dignity and autonomy of those involved or affected? Am I contributing to social justice? All such questions are specific versions of the simpler question: am I doing good research? Any answer to the latter question of the form “Yes, because…” will mobilize both methodological as well as moral considerations. In your internships, you have also had to reflect on the ethical implications of your research in front of an ethical committee or in a dedicated section of your report. Indeed, all research projects and proposals need to contain an ethics section in which you explain and justify how your project complies with the principles of medical and/or research ethics. The course Grant Writing and Research Ethics in Global Health helps you to assist you in training your grant writing skills and aims both to equip you with the conceptual tools necessary to analyse the ethical implications of global health actions, in light of different ethical sensibilities, and to provide useful information on how to write an ethically sensitive and justified research proposal. This course introduces you to the content and the strategy parts to develop a research proposal that will becompetitive for a grant. For this reason, it is important to understand how granting agencies work. During thiscourse we will take a specific grant program, usually from an organisation like NWO (Netherlands Research Council), as a teaching example. This is a good example of “mission-oriented” grants. However, one need to be cautious that there are slight differences in approach when writing a mission-oriented grant, which is topic specific, or a “personal” grant, which is highly CV based and the applicant is often free in topic selection. This will also be discussed during the course. Knowing how the grant review committee will assess your proposal is essential for you to be able to give the required information within the limited words you have available. A lot can be written about the content and background of the proposal, but only a limited set of aspects will offer you credit points in the competition for funds. Do not miss these aspects, and if you can comply with these aspects do not leave this opportunity unused. Only if your grant proposal is judged to be outstanding, it will be considered for funding. To be outstanding means that you: · Show a good fit with the demanded perspective, research strategy and design; · Address a topic that is acknowledged to be important; · Convince the reviewers and committee that you are the only ones who can perform this research; · Show academic reflection (name and provide solutions for the methodological and ethical challenges) In transdisciplinary research you make use of learning circles and/or interventions and your project will intervene in the world — for better or worse. This demands academic self‐‐‐reflection, self-responsibility, andaccountability. It also requires deep ethical reflection. These are not tick box issues, but might be read off indirectlyfrom the way a proposal has been written. That being said, ethics in global health research is more than adhering to the necessary requirements for writing successful research proposals: It is also about reflecting on and doing ‘good’ research in highly ethically-sensitive contexts. This course therefore aims to help you gain important notions and skills for your future career, but most importantly for being a more conscious and reflexive researcher and professional, able to reflect on how your work impacts on others’ lives. The course Grant Writing and Research Ethics in Global Health will consist of five workshops, aiming toencourage critical analysis of ‘reasoning’ in complex case studies, for which no answers have been found yet (= your proposal). Students will be working in groups of three to design and submit a research grant proposal. You will also follow lectures about ethics, and discuss ethics in the form of seminars, where you will apply ethics from theory to practice.Writing research or practice-based proposals for funding is essential in any health-related discipline, including Global Health. Success is based on a strong methodological design that funders can see will lead to successful data collection, a good model for interpretation that is likely to enhance the body of existing knowledge, and adherence to the highest ethical standards. Global Health researchers must write grant proposals that fit the target audience and the specifics of a particular call, but are also faced with greater questions, such as: will the research I am proposing do more good than harm? Will it respect the dignity and autonomy of those involved? Will I contribute to promoting social justice? In simpler terms, will I be doing good research? This course therefore provides students with the opportunity and guidance to prepare a research proposal that engages with the complex (ethical) issues faced by Global Health practitioners and researchers. It will equip students with the conceptual tools necessary to approach research questions in a transdisciplinary way, analyse the ethical implications of Global Health actions in light of different ethical sensibilities, and use this information to write an ethically sensitive and justified research proposal. During the course, the emphasis will be put on practical aspects of planning a long-term research project as well as on scientific research quality: problem definition, research approach, theoretical framework, ethical considerations, research goal, research questions, methods, milestones, scientific and societal relevance, and target group. The student becomes acquainted with the context of research financing, and the financing requirements of similar research. Due to the word limits that are part of funding agencies’ formats, one of the main challenges is to write a full proposal within these constraints. This implies that the student has to identify the essential aspects of the proposal, both scientific and informative, and convince critical review boards to select their proposal for funding, for example by finding formulations that address methodological excellence, urgency, originality and attention to questions of ethics. In groups of four to five, students will develop a research grant proposal that demonstrates their ability to integrate ethical concerns throughout a proposed Global Health research project. Lectures aim to strengthen knowledge about writing various components of a transdisciplinary academic research proposal, and to introduce different ethical frameworks that offer ways of dealing with ethical issues in research. Guest lecturers will speak from their own experience in conducting global health research, providing students with first-hand experiences of research design, ethical reflection and deliberation in Global Health. The seminars will explore the research design and ethics issues that students have encountered themselves as researchers (e.g., in their first internship projects) in-depth, and present relevant key texts on ethics in Global Health research. Plenary presentations by groups will connect lessons learned from the selected literature with the research project they are writing a proposal on.Assessment methods · Research grant proposal (group): 60% · Oral competitive pitch (group): 10% · Individual contribution to group work: 10% · Individual ethics essay: 20%It is advised (but not obligatory) to use the book: Punch, Keith F. (2005). Developing Effective Research Proposals, 2nd edition. London, Sage. Additional readings will be made available on Canvas. Students will also study self-selected relevant articles in the seminars.Obligatory course for second-year students following the MSc Global Health (Research). This course is also available as: · Extracurricular course for VU students · Secondary subject for non-VU students · Open course · Part of an Exchange ProgrammeThis course builds on the students’ previous internship experiences and their future plans for the second internship.