The OZSW’s founding partners have committed to contributing facilities and lecturers for OZSW educational activities. This means that organizing an OZSW course or event is in principle not something that you do pro bono. Please inquire with your department for the specific arrangements in your own institution.
One of the main goals of the OZSW is to offer (educational) activities for research master and PhD candidates. On this page you can find more detailed information on how to organize an activity with support from the OZSW office. Proposed activities may take different forms, such as a course, summer school, a master class, a research seminar or a more practice-oriented workshop in for example questions of methodology. See for more information ‘How to design an activity below’.
The OZSW makes an annual budget for funding of activities per ‘chamber’: Theoretical Philosophy, Ethics and Practical Philosophy, and History of Philosophy. The chair of the chamber decides on how this funding is divided over the courses. If you wish to organize an activity with the OZSW you thus need the approval of (at least) one of the three chambers. Please contact the chair of the chamber and the assistant director well in time with a proposal for an activity.
A proposal for an activity consists of sending the application form and the budget to the chair and the assistant director. All the essential information of a course should be sent to the OZSW before March 1 before the coming academic year. For more specific information, see below.
The OZSW office is responsible for:
- Creating a webpage for the activity
- Creating an online registration form, and handling participant fees
- Announcing the activity on mailing lists (OZSW and external lists) and social media
- Facilitating an evaluation of the activity
- Handing out ECTS certificate
Form: Proposed activities may take different forms, such as a course, summer school, a research seminar or a more practice-oriented workshop in for example questions of methodology. The activity should have a clear aim, learning objective, and outcome (see also ECTS below). The course coordinator may invite other lecturers to teach, or organize and teach the entire activity themselves. It can have (international) experts and may be aimed at any subdiscipline or a broader theme. An OZSW activity should be both a separate course and not be offered in another curriculum at the same time. However, it is possible to create an OZSW activity that is based on a curriculum from previous years.
Content: The content of an OZSW activities should do justice to the diversity of academic philosophy in the Netherlands. This concerns the contents of activities as well as their speakers and audiences. As such, the assessment of proposed activities by their respective Chamber looks at:
- How the activity’s topic contributes to the OZSW offering an overall range of activities that are representative of the topics, debates, theories, authors, subfields, and genres that characterize academic research in philosophy in the Netherlands. This is done with an eye to the present as well as the future. Proposals about newly emerging avenues of research are as welcome as proposals that consolidate existing lines of research.
- How representative the lecture topics and reading materials of an activity are of the state of the art of philosophical research into its theme. This is again done with an eye to the present as well as the future. Proposals about deep-dives into the current state of the art of research into a topic are as welcome as proposals that enrich such a state of the art with new or historically marginalized theories and authors.
- How the activity encourages participation from all within its target audience, regardless of their gender, religion, ethnicity, or any other trait that must not pose a barrier to attendance. Organizers are also asked to take into account that dietary preferences among participants may vary, and that participants may have specific needs relating to physical accessibility.
- How diverse the list of reading materials and / or speakers is. Not a single topic in philosophy is researched by only a single kind of person, in a single place, or in a single language. OZSW activities ought to reflect this, all the more because many OZSW members are students and junior academics who deserve to become acquainted with the full breadth and scope of their (potential) fields.
Schedule: Depending on the form and content of the activity, they consist of a variable number of meetings. These meetings can be scheduled in consecutive weeks (e.g., for a course or research seminar), or within the same week (e.g., for a winter or summer school).
Target group: The courses need to be clear about the intended participants: PhD candidates and/or Research Master students and/or postdocs and other senior scholars, and it should be clear whom will be given priority in case there are more interested participants than available spots.
ECTS: OZSW is not authorized to decide on the amount of ECTS. This has to be discussed with the local exam committees before the course starts. OZSW is also not authorized to reward a student with ECTS credit points. The OZSW is, however, able to offer a certificate for participation in the activity. This certificate may include phrases such as “the activity has a course load that is the equivalent of … ECTS”. A certificate will only be given if the organizer can confirm that the student in question deserves the certificate by meeting the criteria set in advance.
It is the responsibility of the organizer to make a balanced budget. A budget plan needs to be created in advance by the organizer, so that the OZSW office and chair of the chamber can estimate whether the expected costs are reasonable. The budget consists of the following components:
- Funding by the OZSW (by one of the chambers)
- If another organization if co-funding the activity, this should be acknowledged in the budget
- A reasonable estimation of participant fees (participation for OZSW members is free or at a significantly reduced rate)
- Costs of the activity (see more detailed instructions below)
Once approved, the organizer is responsible for making sure that the activity can and will be organized based on this funding. Any profit or loss of activities organized by the section will be recalculated with the section’s budget. The OZSW office requires a (financial) report on the activity afterwards. The organizer should send a bill to the OZSW within one month after the activity has finished. The OZSW will pay this bill provided conditions set in advance – if any – have been met.
There are some guidelines regarding the coverage of costs. For instance, costs not covered by the OZSW are:
- Room rent for venues and rooms that are part of, or are connected to, one of the founding partners. These universities should provide the venue free of charge.
- Exception: In some cases – like events with evening programs, or events in which the social interaction between participants is considered to be an important part of the activity – it may be desirable to organize the activity at an external location.
- Travel costs of organizers associated with one of the founding partners.
Costs that can be included in the budget are:
- Coffee and tea, lunch, and dinner
- Travel expenses for speakers from abroad, or speakers not connected to one of the founding partners
- ReMa students can also declare their travel expenses with the OZSW office, but these costs do not have to be included in the budget
- Accommodation for speakers
- Gifts for speakers
Once the activity has been approved, the local organizer is responsible for:
- The contents and program of the activity, including compiling course materials such as readers, literature lists and bibliographies
- Inviting guest lecturers and booking accommodation and travel
- Providing complete and detailed course information to the OZSW office in order to complete the tasks below
- Booking rooms and catering for the activity
- Providing participants with details on preparation and participation
- Informing the OZSW office which participants earned an ECTS certificate