PhD scholarships at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen.
PhD scholarships at the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen.
The Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies invites applications for two three-year PhD scholarships starting from 1 September 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.
The Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies is home to research and teaching in the areas of English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German languages and their associated literatures, cultures, and societies.
The department welcomes all relevant applications, with particular interest in proposals that explore a) the implications of AI for key areas in modern languages, such as human machine translation or language and culture didactics, or b) cultural memory studies from a literary, cultural, historical, linguistic, or interdisciplinary perspective.
About this Program.
- The PhD programme is a study programme that aims at training PhD students, at an international level, to undertake research, development, knowledge dissemination, and teaching assignments.
- The main emphasis is on PhD students organising and conducting their own research project (under supervision).
- The programme includes the drafting of a PhD thesis, which the student must defend at a public defence.
- The standard duration of the PhD programme is three years of full-time studies, which equals 180 ECTS.
- A PhD degree opens a range of career opportunities in academia and elsewhere.
- As well as writing a thesis, PhD students work in active research environments in Denmark and abroad.
- They contribute to the academic environment, take research training courses, and convey the results of their research in teaching, at academic conferences, and to the general public.
Qualification requirements.
- Applicants must have qualifications corresponding to a master’s level related to the subject area of the project.
- If you have completed your education in Denmark, you must have a master’s degree covered by the collective agreement for academics in the state sector.
- If you have completed your education outside of Denmark, you must either have a master’s degree equivalent to a Danish master’s degree (two years) or at minimum a bachelor’s degree equivalent to a Danish bachelor’s degree (three years) and be assessed as having professional qualifications at master’s level.
- If you have completed your education outside of Denmark, we will obtain an assessment of your education from the Danish Research Agency.
- Applicants must have skills in written and spoken academic English at a high level.
- Applicants with projects within French/Francophone, Italian, Spanish/Latin American, and German studies are expected to master the relevant language, both written and spoken, at a high level.
- The department may request that applicants document their English or other language skills.
How to Apply
Please submit your application online.
To apply, please click on the “Apply now” icon at the bottom of this page.
Your application must be written in Danish or English, and include the following attachments (with descriptive titles) in either PDF or Word format:
- CV (max. two pages). Please use this template: CV template.
- Cover letter (max. 1,200 characters incl. spaces). Kindly specify if there is a particular research environment you would like to be associated with or teaching/courses that you would particularly be interested in contributing to.
- Diplomas, transcripts, and a description of the grading scale
- Please include the following documents: bachelor’s and master’s degree diplomas and transcripts, description of the grading scale.
- Note: If your degree diploma is not available by the application deadline, please include your latest transcript of grades.
- Project abstract (max. 1,200 characters incl. spaces)
- Project description (max. 12,000 characters incl. spaces excluding bibliography).
- Please follow the guidelines on project descriptions available here: Admission requirements and application procedures, University of Copenhagen.
- If the academic purpose of the project requires special financial support (e.g., extended fieldwork abroad or investment in technical infrastructure) or special permission (e.g., access to archival material), this must be clearly described in the project description, including an approximate indication of costs or whether permission has been granted. No separate documentation should be uploaded.
Other relevant material
- Please do not include suggestions for supervisors or commitments from supervisors, recommendations, theses, etc.
- Applicants holding a degree from a university where the working language is neither English nor a Scandinavian language must include translated versions of their diploma and transcripts, verified by the issuing university.
- The documents must be translated into English, Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish.
- In addition, an official description of the relevant grading scale (e.g., diploma supplement) must be included.
- If you apply for more than one scholarship at the Faculty of Humanities, please disclose this information in your application, as it may help the coordination between the departments.
Assessment and Selection criteria
The following criteria are applied when assessing PhD applications:
- The quality, originality, and feasibility of the PhD project
- Research qualifications, as reflected in the attached CV and project description
- Competencies and knowledge of relevant fields of academic research
- Level (grades obtained) of bachelor’s and master’s studies.
Please note that only a few scholarships are awarded at each call for applications, and competition is intense.
The deadline for applications is 15 February 2026 at 23:59 CET.
Any applications or additional material submitted after the deadline will not be considered.
However, changes may be made to the submitted application right up until the deadline.
