Use – and expand – your network before applying for the PhD to get valuable feedback on early drafts of the application.
One of the most important steps you can take when applying for a PhD at the Faculty of Arts is to reach out to potential supervisors before you hand in your application. This will serve two purposes: you will expand your international network in the field you wish to do research in, and, perhaps most importantly, you may obtain invaluable feedback on a draft of your project description.
Getting feedback from a local academic within your field should be viewed as a key step in the application process, and will provide you with knowledge of what is expected in your discipline that you cannot obtain in any other way.
This form of feedback may also come from current PhD-students, or junior researchers (postdocs or assistant professors), who have themselves been through the process recently, and have come out successfully.
Initial contact
There are 8 PhD Programmes at Arts that cover all the disciplines and departments. Your initial contact should be to one of these. Your application will be assessed by the most relevant of the 8 PhD programmes and your application should therefore fit into one of the programmes You can read more about the different PhD Programmes here:
http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/programmes/
Some PhD Programmes arrange events for students and candidates who consider applying for a PhD. At these events the potential applicants have the opportunity to speak to the PhD Programmes Director, current PhD students within the programme, and administrators from the Graduate School of Arts. Contact the relevant PhD Programme Director to learn more about upcoming events.
Further, you might take a look at the university’s website to find professors or associate professors who work in your field. Then contact them with a brief initial description of your project and ask them if they can provide feedback or possibly refer you to one of their colleagues.
Make sure to do this early on in the process as most professors are very busy and cannot be expected to respond at short notice. Also, as providing feedback on PhD applications is usually not a part of the work tasks of academic staff, you should expect that some will not have time and opportunity to provide the requested feedback.
Each PhD Programme has its own Director, who is the one responsible for the programme. The PhD Programme Director will be able to guide you through your application process and to provide you with suggestions and advice about whether to respond to an open or a specific call for PhD projects. The list of PhD Programme Directors for all programmes are accessible through this link: http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/contact/
"Become a part of the community"
It’s important to network and getting feedback on your research idea and early drafts of your application before applying.
If you want to apply for a PhD scholarship at Aarhus University it’s a good idea to be enrolled in one of the PhD Programmes at Arts and become a part of the local academic community. While you expand your network you will get an impression of what is going on in the field and who is who.
If you are unable to come here and study before applying for a PhD, contact the PhD Programme – preferably a potential main supervisor. In any case, you should try talking to a researcher in your area and ask for feedback on your drafts for the project description.
Contacting the PhD PRogramme in question before applying helps clarify whether the project you are proposing is in line with the research carried out there.
From a student's perspective
In the video below, an international student at the Faculty of Arts talks about his own experience of the importance of contacting the relevant PhD Programme, and even department, in advance.
Feedback from your fellow students and peers who are not specialists in the subject area may also be valuable – for instance, to ensure the clarity of your proposal. AU Studypedia has a guide for giving and receiving feedback on the page Group Work & Feedback.
The content of this page was written by Charlotte Albrechtsen, Tine Wirenfeldt Jensen and Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen from Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Arts, Aarhus University.
