Lecturers Without Borders (LeWiBo) is a network of scientists and schools. Scientists use their travelling opportunities (e.g. to attend conferences, on vacations, etc.) to provide free lectures in schools all over the world. Our main aim is to bring science to schools and to inspire a new generation of scientists. By registering as a lecturer, you would not only have the possibility of contributing to the learning community by participating in lectures in schools around the world, but will also have the chance to meet other scientists with shared interests and enlarge your own professional network.

Not at all! During the COVID-19 pandemic and due to the travel restrictions, most of our activities have moved online: we're currently offering webinars to the schools in our network and organised dozens of online activities (including 3 scientific conferences and several workshops) fully online. So, if you would prefer to give lectures from your lab/office/home, you're more than welcome to do so. We're also starting to organise local activities whenever our scientists and schools decide to collaborate on a local project (for example, a series of in person lectures in Nairobi or the Women in STEM competition), so if you know schools in your hometown that would be interested in this type on initiative, please invite them to our network!

During the registration process, in addition to asking you about some basic personal and professional information, we will ask you to review our code of conduct, our child safeguarding policy and our diversity, equity and inclusion statement. Please read those documents carefully and contact us if you have any questions about them. You will be required to abide by them at all times and you risk being excluded from LeWIBo activities if you violate those regulations.

Of course! Some of the lecturers in our network are not actively doing research anymore. If you have a background in STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - and you think there's something you can share with students so they can better understand and develop an interest in these subjects, please register as a lecturer. Also, please note that presenting students with examples of people who work on areas other than (academic) research is also contributing to giving them a broader view of "what a scientist does" and therefore can be very useful!

Although the language we use for communicating with scientists is English, your webinars or lectures do not necessarily have to be in that language. If you feel more comfortable giving lectures in your native language and/or in any other language, you can tell us which languages you'd prefer to use when you fill out the form to register as a lecturer! Many of the students we organise lectures for are not fluent in English, so we try to offer as many options as possible! Also, showing them examples of scientists who speak their own language (and maybe come from their own country or even town) is another way of fighting stereotypes of who can be a scientist!

Of course you can! We'd be glad to help you make this an amazing first experience. We will put you in touch with other scientists that can share their experience with you, support you with materials and workshops and, if you prefer that we assist you in preparing your presentation, we can even do that. If you prefer, instead, to give it a try on your own, we will also provide you with feedback after your presentation, in order to help you improve for future editions! Our team is here for you!

Sure! The most important thing you can do for us is to spread the word to other people that may want to join our network. You can find a few resources to help us here, along with a way to provide financial contributions, if you choose to contribute in this way. Also, from time to time we might contact you asking for help in events, coordination of activities, curation of material and/or other forms of scientific support.

Any member of staff of a school can be our contact person for that particular institution. It doesn't matter if you're a teacher (of any subject), a mentor or the principal of the school, you can choose to register on our database and you will be the one receiving our updates. If afterwards there's another person from your same institution who would like to request a lecture or webinar, they can email us and ask us to add their email as a contact person for that particular event, linking them to the existing school.

Of course you can! We have several types of educational institutions and organisations as partners. Some of them work with several schools and greatly assist us by reaching out to schools that don't yet know about LeWiBo's activities! Please feel free to complete the registration form or contact us using the form at the bottom of this page if you have more questions or need any help.

The answer is YES. Not only because we offer a lot of online resources and we offer live online lectures (webinars), but also because our scientists usually travel a lot! Moreover, maybe your school is situated just across the street from the home of a scientist (for example, in Vzvad, a Russian town that you can only reach by river, we have contacts of both schools and scientists). If you know scientists in your community... please invite them to join us! And finally... you can consider hosting them for a webinar, which they can join remotely and would be happy to contribute with! Browse our webinar catalogue or email us to know more.

Yes. Completing the registration form will only take a few minutes and will not only allow us to personalise our offers for your institution and keep you posted on events, but also have a legal record of who was involved in our ativities and when. We have a strict child safeguarding policy and a code of conduct for our members, and in order to make sure that everyone respects it, we need to keep track of all the activities organised by our members. Please note: we take you privacy (and that of your students) very seriously, so we will never use the information you provide us for anything other than organising events with you. We will never request any personal information about any individual student nor any personal information about yourself - other than your name and a contact email. We will keep the information safe and you will be able to request us to delete it (as per European GDPR regulations) whenever you want.

Yes, you can! Our scientists would be more than happy to participate in an on-demand lecture or webinar, even if they seem too specific! Most of them are experts in broad areas and could easily adapt their lectures to meet the needs of your institution, so please feel free to contact us by email. Let us know exactly what it is you're looking for and we'll do our best to find a suitable speaker. Or, if you prefer, browse our webinar catalogue to get inspired!

Of course you can! Our scientists speak dozens of different languages and most of them would be more than happy to give a lecture in a language that the students will understand better... and even more so if it is their own mother tongue! When you register as a school, you will be able to tell us which language(s) your students understand, and we will make sure we find a speaker that suits your needs!

There's no limit to the number of students that can participate in a lecture, although we might combine your group with another one if there's less than 10 students. Big or small, every group is welcome! So feel free to join our network or email us to get more information about our potential lectures.

Absolutely! Most - if not all - of our scientists would be more than happy to participate in such an event! Most students around the world finish high school without ever meeting a scientist in real life. Their idea of what scientists are - what they do on a daily basis, what their interests are and even how they look and talk - sometimes comes exclusively from what they see on TV and social media. This can contribute to the propagation of certain stereotypes - e.g. regarding gender, ethnicity and the interests of scientists - and may lead to students thinking that pursuing a career in STEM is not for them. Our idea is to help scientists communicate their research, while at the same time, helping students meet real-life scientists and ask them questions about their research, as well as about their hobbies, their country of origin, their professional pathway, and more. Please feel free to contact us by email or by using the form below to request such a lecture. We'd be more than happy to find a speaker for you.