Applicants must explain their goals for the doctoral program, and why they believe themselves academically qualified to engage in doctoral studies, e.g., because of good performance in studies, including:

• undergraduate and graduate studies
• participation in research projects
• published articles
• challenging projects
• professional experience
• interesting research
• interest in specific jobs upon completion of their studies, etc.

An applicant must also specify:

Whether studies will be full-time or part-time (percentage)
The courses planned. Here the student states fields of emphasis she/he deems necessary to strengthen.

Financing plan.
Here the applicant reports grant applications, loans, own financing, work or other relevant things.

Request for a supervisor (if relevant) along with reasons. See information regarding professional requirements for doctoral student's supervisors under the quality standards and requirements for doctoral programmes at the University of Iceland.

Standards and Requirements, Quality of Doctoral Programmes.

PhD applicants must hand in:

A brief description of the project in Icelandic and English.

• 100 - 150 words

A description of the planned research project, about 2000-4000 words, in addition to a list of references, in the language in which the dissertation will be written following the faculty's rules.

The following shall be stated:

• goals, the state of knowledge and scientific value
• a description of the implementation (procedures)
• a schedule with information on the main benchmarks and programme completion
• the plan for the publication of the results and the site of publication
• a list of references

The description must be clear, realistic and scheduled (months and quarters). The project name (working title) shall be descriptive of the research. The division of the research into subjects shall be included (a rough summary of the contents), such as division into chapters or division of the dissertation into articles.

A description of the method/methods to be applied in answering the project's research questions. It is imperative to relate and explain how the research proposal and the main research questions differ from existing research (domestic and foreign) for the same or similar research fields, and what the novelty of the research is.

Finally, the applicant must state why he or she deems the research to be important for the research field’s development in the Icelandic and/or international context.

• Faculty of Political Sciences
• School of Social Sciences