DEUTSCHER AKADEMISCHER AUSTAUSCHDIENST EV

Their core work

DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) is Germany's national agency for international academic exchange, operating as a membership association of German universities and student bodies. In the H2020 context, their visible contribution centers on supporting refugee integration into European higher education and research careers — designing peer learning frameworks, cross-country guidance systems, and career pathways specifically for displaced scholars. They bring an established European network of higher education institutions and their connection to the EURAXESS portal, the EU's main researcher mobility infrastructure, which gives them direct access to displaced researcher populations and institutional contacts across Europe. Their work sits at the intersection of academic mobility policy, social inclusion, and researcher career development.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 project (GREET, 2018–2019), DAAD focused on the immediate integration challenge: peer learning networks, cross-country support structures, and guiding refugee students through higher education institutions. Their second project (CARe, 2019–2020) moved clearly downstream in the pipeline — away from initial access support and toward longer-term labour market integration and structured career advancement for refugee researchers specifically. This shift reflects a maturing of the refugee integration agenda in European policy: the early emergency-response phase gave way to sustained career and employability programming for a more defined cohort (researchers rather than students broadly).

DAAD's trajectory in H2020 points toward increasingly specialised researcher-focused programming — moving up the career ladder from student support toward professional integration — suggesting future collaboration interest in research career equity, researcher mobility, and EURAXESS-adjacent services.

How they like to work

DAAD participates exclusively as a partner — never as coordinator — across both H2020 projects, suggesting they contribute institutional reach and subject-matter expertise while leaving project management to others. Their consortia are notably small (only 2 unique partners recorded), which may reflect the niche, policy-adjacent nature of their CSA projects rather than a preference for isolation. Working with DAAD likely means access to their Germany-wide university network and their established channels within the EURAXESS researcher mobility ecosystem.

Across their two H2020 projects, DAAD worked with only 2 unique consortium partners across 2 countries — an unusually narrow footprint for an organisation of their actual institutional scale. Their European cooperation keyword across both projects signals intent beyond Germany, but the H2020 data does not reflect the breadth of their real-world international network.

What sets them apart

DAAD is not a research organisation — they are an institutional gateway to German academia and a key node in the European researcher mobility infrastructure via EURAXESS. For consortia addressing researcher training, mobility policy, or inclusion in research careers, DAAD brings legitimacy, reach into German higher education, and direct access to displaced or internationally mobile researcher populations that few other partners can match. Their value is less about generating research outputs and more about dissemination, policy uptake, and connecting project results to actual higher education institutions at scale.

Highlights from their portfolio

• CARe
  The larger of the two projects (EUR 100,050) and the more specialised one — targeting refugee researchers rather than students broadly, and explicitly connecting to the EURAXESS portal infrastructure, suggesting DAAD's closest alignment with EU researcher mobility policy.
• GREET
  DAAD's entry point into H2020, establishing their positioning around cross-country peer learning for refugees — a role that leverages their core institutional mission of international academic exchange.