Academic network in Belgium

Belgium boasts eight Academies that each have their own members. The KVAB works with several of them.

  • The KVAB is the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten [Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts].
  • The ARB is de Académie Royale (des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts), the KVAB’s French-speaking counterpart. The ARB and KVAB are successors to the Theresian Academy, which was founded in 1772, re-established in 1816 and split in 1938.
  • The KAGB is de Koninklijke Academie voor Geneeskunde van België [Royal Academy for Medicine of Belgium], an institution of the Flemish Community falling within the remit of Agentschap Zorg en Gezondheid [Health and Care Agency].
  • The ARMB is de Académie royale de médecine de Belgique, the KAGB’s French-speaking counterpart.
  • The KANTL is de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde [the Royal Academy for Dutch Language and Literature], based in Ghent, Koningstraat 18. The KANTL and the KVAB’s Humanities Class meet annually.
  • The ARLLFB is de Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique, the KANTL’s French-speaking counterpart.
  • The KAOW-ARSOM is de Koninklijke Academie voor Overzeese Wetenschappen – Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, [the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences] It is the only bilingual Academy and is based in the Louizalaan in Brussels.
  • The Young Academy iis a member organization of the KVAB which operates autonomously and consists of young scientists and artists. It was established in 2013 by the KVAB, and uses the KVAB’s secretariat.

Apart from the KANTL and the KAOW-ARSOM, all Academies are located in the Palace of the Academies in Brussels.

In addition to the Academies, there is also the RASAB, the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium, a collaboration between the KVAB and the ARB for, among others, international representation. The staff at RASAB take care of the administration of the national committees and the representation of Belgium in international scientific unions.

The national scientific committees coordinate the various disciplines in Belgium and their representation in an international context. For example, the national committees nominate the delegates in the general meeting of the international scientific union of the discipline (affiliated with ICSU ). These nominations are approved by the Classes of the Academy/ies. Some national committees organize conferences, talks or other events, such as the annual Crystal Growth Contest (National Committee of Crystallography) and the biennial PhD-day (National Committee of Mathematics). There are 25 national committees, ranging from Antarctic Research to Mathematics.
Finally, the KVAB and ARB together accommodate a number of Royal Committees:

•    Royal Historical Committee 
•    Royal Committee for Toponymy and Dialectology