Ghent BOF DOS 2027 — Fully Funded PhD for the Global South

Most doctoral funding in Europe asks you to move to Europe for four years. Ghent's BOF DOS scholarship deliberately does not. Each year Ghent University funds about fifteen sandwich PhD scholarships for researchers from Global South countries, and the design is simple: you spend 24 months of your PhD funded at Ghent University in Belgium, and the other 24 months at a partner university in your own region, co-funded locally. The degree itself is awarded by Ghent, so you finish with a European doctorate without disconnecting from the institution and community you came from.

What the award actually covers

Ghent funds every month you spend in Belgium: a full doctoral scholarship for up to 24 months of research in Ghent. Your supervisor there also receives EUR 310 per month of bench fee for lab costs and materials, and a EUR 8,000 travel budget that covers flights for you and for both supervisors to visit each other's sites. The other half of your PhD is not funded by Ghent, which is why the co-funding rule exists: your partner university must guarantee in writing that you will hold a full-time local scholarship or salary for those 24 months, and that you will be free of teaching duties for at least 90 percent of that time.

Who can apply

Three conditions decide whether you can even submit. You must hold the nationality of a country on Ghent's Global South Country List for 2027, so download the list and check it before anything else. You must be at the beginning of your PhD, with at least 36 months of doctoral research still ahead of you when the fellowship starts on 1 October 2027. And you need two supervisors, not one: a professor at Ghent willing to act as your promoter, and a supervisor at the partner university who commits to the local half. Ghent encourages female researchers, and a supervisor can nominate two candidates per call only if they are of different genders.

A quick self-check before you invest weeks in this:

- Is your country on the 2027 list? - Do you already have a realistic partner university in the Global South that can fund you for 24 months? - Have you identified a specific Ghent professor whose research actually matches yours? - Can you show at least 36 months of PhD work remaining as of October 2027?

If any answer is no, fix that first, because applications missing any of these are rejected without review.

The deadline

The application deadline is 9 February 2027 at 23:59 Belgian time. If you need an exception to the standard mobility or funding scheme, for example because your field requires fieldwork first, that request must reach BOF@ugent.be by 15 January 2027. Results are published online from 12 May 2027, and the first Ghent stay must begin between 1 October 2027 and 28 February 2028.

How to apply

Start months early, because the sequence matters. First, find your Ghent promoter through the Research Explorer and secure their agreement; nothing moves without it. Second, agree on a partner university and local supervisor, and get the written guarantee of 24 months of full-time local funding and protected research time. Third, prepare the joint application form in English, the supervisor's advice on you as a researcher, and the ethics and biosafety questionnaire, which the Ghent supervisor submits separately. Everything goes by email to BOFapplication@ugent.be as PDFs, named exactly as the call documents require. There is no portal, so late or incomplete emails are simply rejected.

The official call, forms and country list are all on the Ghent page:

https://www.ugent.be/en/research/funding/bof/dos

Materials checklist

- Completed 2027 application form (English, PDF) - Written statement from the partner university guaranteeing 24 months of full-time local funding - Statement that you will be exempted from teaching during the South period - The Ghent supervisor's advice-on-the-candidate form - The ethics and biosafety advice form - Exception request form, only if you need a mobility or funding exception

Common mistakes to avoid

Applicants lose this scholarship on process, not on merit. The most common failure is proposing a supervisor who never agreed to be involved, or a partner institution that cannot actually guarantee co-funding. The second is ranking: proposals are judged partly on South-North relevance, so a PhD topic with no connection to development challenges in the Global South reads as a mismatch even if the science is strong. The third is treating the mobility schedule as a detail: your timeline must start and end in Ghent with stays of 3 to 12 months, and the reviewers check it line by line.

Tips to win

Choose your Ghent promoter by reading their last three years of publications, not by ranking. Write the South-North relevance paragraph honestly and specifically, naming the beneficiaries and the policy problem your research addresses. Ask your local supervisor for the funding guarantee letter early; university bureaucracies take longer than you think, and a conditional promise will not pass the technical check. And if you are a woman from a listed country, apply, because Ghent states its intention to balance cohorts and caps each supervisor at two candidates of different genders, which quietly improves the odds for female applicants in most fields.

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If you want an OEAC advisor to review your research outline or your co-funding letter before February, send it over and we will go through it with you.

Last updated: 13 November 2026

Source: https://www.ugent.be/en/research/funding/bof/dos