Welcome to your doctoral education at the Faculty of Social Sciences. This page contains a short introduction to what formalities you need to be aware of and what to consider when you are at the starting point of your doctoral studies.
The Faculty Board governs over doctoral education and has established what guidelines apply at the Faculty of Social Sciences.
The faculty's and the university's legal framework for doctoral education can be found on the page Legal framework for doctoral education
At a department, the head of department makes all formal decisions concerning your doctoral education. For each third-cycle subject area, there is a director of doctoral studies who you can always turn to with questions.
Before you are formally accepted to your doctoral education, a funding plan for your doctoral studies must be drawn up. When establishing the funding plan, the head of department will also do a salary placement. All doctoral students are covered by the same collective agreement and wage development follows a set template, a form of wage ladder for doctoral students, that is. Your funding plan is adopted by the dean and at the same time potential credit transfers from completed courses will take place. Such credit transfers mean that your duration of studies is shortened by the equivalent period of the completed courses.
The head of department reaches the formal decision on your admission. Together with the decision on admission, your principal and second supervisors are also appointed. One of your first tasks as a doctoral student is usually to write an individual study plan together with your supervisors. In Swedish, this is called individuell studieplan and is sometimes abbreviated ISP. At Umeå University, there is a web-based system for drawing up doctoral students' individual study plans (Web-ISP).
As a doctoral student, you have both rights and obligations, and your primary task is to complete a doctoral thesis and a number of doctoral courses. The distribution of time between courses and writing your thesis is stated in the general study plan for your subject area, and in potential policy documents for your subject area.