UARC Newsletter September
The University of Aruba Research Center (UARC) kicked off the academic year with several funding opportunities (such as the NWO call listed below). We also co-organized an energizing workshop on how to contribute UA knowledge and pictures to Wikipedia during this week’s Open Science Week! Next up is Open Access Week (20-24 October), for which we are already preparing, together with the UA Library! We are also working on an overview of UA Research Projects, by sharing an overview and asking for further input from UA staff (see below). Together with UNESCO Aruba we discussed Aruba’s progress on Open Science, and together with the UA colleagues we discussed our challenges in submitting funding proposals. And we were visited by 24Ora to explain more about the activities of the Research Center (in Papiamento)!
NWO PhD call update
The University of Aruba is supporting 5 candidates with submitting their PhD application under Category A of the Caribbean Research – PhD Scholarships 2025! Congratulations to Liesje Proveyer, Nurianne Arias, Brechtje Huiskes, Hannah Meijer and Miguel van der Velden on successfully submitting the pre-proposal for the call!
The UA is proud to be able to support these candidates in their pursuit of their PhD projects. We wish them luck, and are looking forward to supporting them in the next steps!
Research Project overview
The Research Center is working on a project overview for our university, which is accessible to all UA staff. By clicking on this smartsheet link you’ll be guided to the access process using your UA account. Once you have access, please also check if your projects are available in the overview! If anything is missing, or if you know of a relevant funding call, you can add them yourself to the overview by filling out this form.
By having a complete overview of our research projects we can more clearly see the impact that research is having, and it will also be easier for everyone to reach out to people with expertise on a topic or with a specific funding call!
Open Access Week
As part of the Open Access week (20-24 October) UARC is (co-)organizing two events! Save the date for events on Open Access & Library Databases, and a PhD lunch session!
UARC/Library event: Open Access & Library Databases
Save the date to learn more about Open Access and how you can make use of the UA Library resources to find the information that you need for your research! On 23 October we gather in the MC Chapel (12-2 PM) for this workshop!
UARC PhD lunch session
Bring your own drinks/food - and a couple of sentences about your research and where you are currently struggling or what you would like to celebrate! On 20 October (12-1 PM) we will get introduced to each other’s research, food preferences and if time allows - learn a bit more about open access and copyright!
Save the Date! Data Science event
Save the date to join The Turing Way Book Dash on Aruba! On 11 November we will organize a full day event to learn more about The Turing Way, a book and community about reproducible, ethical and inclusive data science. The event is made possible thanks to funding from Open Science NL.
During this event you will be introduced to The Turing Way book and the workings of the community, and you will learn how you can contribute to the content of the book. This will be an active event - similar to editing Wikipedia - so you will participate in discussions and/or write content for the book. This event will not just be an introduction where you can sit and listen in: we want to hear from you! No prior experience is needed - as long as you’re interested in data science you should be in the right place!
Our next newsletter will contain more information about the event schedule and how to join. You can already indicate your interest to stay informed via this form: https://forms.gle/5wVxH5LmWTUcdct68
The event is open to all interested to learn more about data science and how to contribute their experiences/insights to this community - so UA staff, students but also other organizations and people are very welcome to join! We have capped participation to 20 people and will give priority to people indicating their interest in advance in joining us!
Research Writing Sprints
The next Research Writing Sprints dates are out! All sessions will take place in the Research Center! Send an email to research@ua.aw to receive calendar invites for the sessions.
During the Research Writing Sprints we sit down together to write. At the beginning of the session we set and discuss our goals, and at the end of the session you have hopefully achieved your writing goals and are progressing your research project!
Date | Time |
|---|---|
29 September | 12-2 PM |
16 October | 9-11 AM |
27 October | 10 AM - 12 PM |
6 November | 9-11 AM |
18 November | 12-2 PM |
1 December | 2-4 PM |
16 December | 11 AM - 1 PM |
Past UARC events
Wikipedia event 24 September
And as part of the Open Science week (22-26 September) we co-organized a workshop on how to contribute to Wikipedia, together with the Wikipedia on Aruba team!
Many thanks to Ginelly Quandt for leading us through! Together we made a lot of edits, a new page and we added several pictures of the University to Wikipedia!
You can still join the Wikipedia on Aruba team in October for several events in person (14 October) or online (24 October).
Proposal Panic 16 September
This month we also gathered to share our challenges and tips when you are working on a research proposal! Many thanks to Benedicta Deogratias, Nurianne Arias, Liesje Proveyer, Eric Mijts and Esther Plomp for sharing your challenges and tips for this process! The slides of the session are shared on our Open Knowledge Repository, together with a short summary and some follow up actions for the Research Center. We expect to organize a more practical/how to workshop on research proposals in early 2026, aligned with the NWO PhD Caribbean call.
Reminder: ICA (International Cartographic Association) Cartography and Sustainable Development Workshop
The University of Aruba will be the host for the 2026 ICA (International Cartographic Association) Cartography and Sustainable Development Workshop, taking place from 26-28 January 2026! Registration is open and abstracts are welcome until October 18! This event brings together cartographers, local experts, sustainability experts, policymakers, to explore how maps can illuminate sustainability challenges and solutions—especially in small-island contexts.
Symposium Sustainable Island Futures
The next Sustainable Island Futures symposium takes place on 21 November 2025 (9-11 AM). This multidisciplinary symposium aims to bring together emerging scholars to exchange ideas and approaches for a sustainability transformation in small island states and to foster interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration. This year’s symposium is organized by SISSTEM (from the UA), the Islands section of the International Society for Industrial Ecology (ISIE), the Metabolism of Islands (MoI) and the Universiteit Leiden Institute of Environmental Sciences (NL).
Early Career Researchers are invited to submit abstracts by 15 October for the conference centering on research design, contextualization of methodologies, theoretical frameworks or research outcomes on resource circularity, island metabolism, industrial ecology, sociometabolic research, islandness or on threats and opportunities that hinder or further sustainable development and resilience of small island states.
Research Highlight: NWO NWA Sandpit
Luc Alofs and Benedicta Deogratias attended NWO’s Sandpit event for the NWA (Dutch Research Agenda) funding call ‘Slavery pasts: (understudied forms of) impacts and perspectives’ on the 25-29 Augustus 2025, in order to contribute to a research proposal to be submitted in November. Well done Luc and Benedicta, and good luck with the proposal!
Events and Courses
Join the LatinR2025 conference online, December 1–5, 2025. Free registration!
The UK Data Service is organizing two introduction courses on Research Data Management (2 October, 5:00-6:30 AM) & Ethical and legal guidelines in data sharing (16 October, 5:00-6:30 AM). Recordings will also be available on YouTube.