PhD students as non-employees

In the Netherlands, PhD students (promovendi) are not considered students, but full-time academic researchers.

If you are independently funded (your own funds, student loan, grant from your home country, etc.), you can apply directly to the Graduate Programme in Logic to become a PhD student. For this, you use the GPiL Application Form (WORD file; PDF file), and check the box "PhD Programme" on the first page.

Requirements. Please click here to find the requirements for the GPiL PhD programme.

The academic mentor. Each accepted student will be assigned an academic mentor. The mentor is supposed to tell the students which courses to choose in the first year and will play a crucial role in the evaluation. This mentor is not to be confused with a PhD thesis supervisor (even though the mentor can become the PhD thesis supervisor).

The first year. In the first year, PhD students take courses from the graduate programme (see our course lists) and start smaller research projects with various staff members. They are actively looking for a PhD thesis supervisor and topic.

Evaluation. After the first year, the PhD student will be evaluated by the mentor and the director of GPiL. The evaluation is based on the course and general performance of the student. A student can only be positively evaluated if he or she has found a PhD thesis supervisor or topic. Positively evaluated PhD students are accepted for three more years.

Years Two to Four. After the evaluation, the main emphasis is the independent research in the PhD thesis project. To get an impression of possible PhD thesis topics, you can find the publications in the ILLC Dissertation Series here.