PhD Programme in Education

Are you inquisitive and interested in deepening your knowledge in a specific field? Are you passionate about a specific research question? Would you like to make a contribution to increasing knowledge concerning learning, education and development? Do you enjoy writing academic papers in English? Are you able to independently structure your tasks and your time and can meet deadlines? Then applying for a PhD position could be of interest to you.

PhD Position Announcement 

Provided that funds are available, annual PhD positions at the Department of Education are announced in February. The next call for PhD positions will take place on February 2, 2026.

PhD Positions at Stockholm University

Your application in four steps

 

In order to meet the general admissions criteria, the applicant must have completed a second-cycle degree/Master’s degree and completed courses equivalent to at least 240 Swedish higher education credits (hp/ECTS), of which at least 60 ECTS must be in the second cycle or have otherwise acquired equivalent knowledge in Sweden or elsewhere. 

The General Admissions Criteria must be fulfilled by the closing date of the admissions round.

In order to meet the Special Admissions Criteria, the applicant must have completed courses equivalent to at least 90 hp/ECTS and a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS in one of the following subject areas: education, international and comparative education, didactics, subject-specific didactics, child and youth studies, special education, pedagogical work,

or a teaching degree equivalent to at least 180 hp/ECTS, including a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS, 

or a Bachelor of Arts in Study and Career Guidance, including a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS,

or completed courses equivalent to at least 90 hp/ECTS within another Social Science (including medical education) or Humanities subject area, including a thesis of at least 15 hp/ECTS. 

In all cases, the thesis must address research questions relevant to educational issues, theories, and methods. 

In addition, the applicant must have excellent spoken and written English language skills, which will be tested during the admissions round. 

The General and Special Admissions Criteria must be fulfilled by the application closing date.

The PhD programme requires excellent spoken and written English language skills since, for example, required courses are given in English.

English language proficiency is assessed during the application process: a degree project/thesis written in Swedish must include a summary in English of a maximum of 1 page using font size 12.

Applicants who are selected during the second assessment by the faculty experts are invited in for interviews and a language test. Spoken academic English proficiency is tested as part of the interview by the applicants answering some questions in English. The applicants' written academic English skills are tested by writing an abstract based on a peer-reviewed article. This test takes place after the interviews when the applicants will be handed an article for which to write the abstract within a given time limit.

Those applications which fulfil the General and Special Admissions Criteria will be assessed based on the submitted research plan. Faculty members conduct this assessment.

A professor or associate professor who has a known bias towards an applicant (for example, are related to or have another personal relationship with or was a former supervisor) will not assess that application. In order to avoid bias, the applicant is expected to independently write their application without consultation from a departmental contact.

The research plans are made anonymous and then sent on to the supervisor group, a group of professors and associate professors at the department, who individually assign (without consultation) point values to each research plan, according to the following criteria:

  • Stringency of the research question and analysis of earlier work and of the research plan.
  • Familiarity with the research area of the intended research plan.
  • Methodological and theoretical understanding and the degree to which reflexivity is reached in the texts.
  • The qualities of planned research in relation to what it contributes to the discipline.
  • The intended study’s prospective ethical implications and possibility of an ethical review.
  • Ability to express themselves both written and verbally in an academic setting.
  • The planned study’s feasibility within the allotted time.

The point values are added together and the applications with the highest total values are sent on to the final assessment round where their entire application, including degree projects/theses, are assessed by a group of faculty experts, made up of a group of professors, who assess the applications according the criteria listed above.

The highest ranked applicants are then invited in for interviews and a test of their written and spoken English.

The final admissions decision is made by the departmental board, based upon the total point value assigned by the faculty experts.

The applicants are informed as soon as a decision has been made, during the first half of June.

Please note that if you are planning to conduct data collection abroad, you must locate external financing to cover your travel costs. The department is not able to cover these costs. It can also be difficult to combine lengthy data collection projects with required course work so be sure to consider if your research plan will be possible to complete within the time allowed.

We do not accept PhD applicants who plan to visit/collect data in countries or regions included on the Swedish Foreign Ministry travel warning list:

http://www.regeringen.se/uds-reseinformation/ud-avrader/

In addition, we do not accept PhD-projects which require interpreter services.

In Sweden, applicants apply competitively for paid positions as PhD students. The PhD students receive a salary for a maximum of 48 months/8 semesters/4 years. Salaries are set according to the Stockholm University salary scale for PhD students.

The PhD programme consists of 240 Swedish higher education credits. The course work amounts to a third of the programme - 90 course credits – of which 52.5 credits consists of required courses and 37.5 are elective course credits. PhD students are expected to complete the required courses during the first two years of the programme. Their education, including course work and actual research, is conducted during weekdays and is mainly done on campus.

Our doctoral students have three supervisors cooperating and providing different skills in an effort to support the PhD student to become a proficient researcher in Education. A PhD student is expected to work independently to a high extent and receives supervision about 1-2 times per month.

Together with their supervisors, PhD students can choose elective courses in relation to their specific area of research. Students may choose elective courses among the courses offered by our department or by other departments/universities in both Sweden and abroad.

A PhD student is expected to engage in the research seminars at the department and cooperate with peers in creating a rich social environment with interesting and challenging discussions.

During the programme, PhD students are expected to present their research at, at least one international conference.

Please note that doctoral studies are only offered on campus. It is not possible to enrol through distance learning. Doctoral students are expected to actively participate in the departmental research environment through regularly participating in seminars.

PhD Courses

Terms of Employment for PhD Students

General Study Plan for the PhD Programme in Education pdf, 247.5 kB. (247 Kb)

Provided there is available funding, annual PhD vacancies at the Department of Education at Stockholm University are announced in February.
The next possible vacancies may be announced in February 2026. 

Applications can only be submitted when a PhD position is announced.
See the central Stockholm University vacancy page to apply.

A complete application should included the following documents:

  • An application letter
  • CV
  • An official transcript of records and an official copy of your degrees, in order to meet certain general and specific admission criteria
  • Degree project/thesis (Master's level), written in either Swedish or English or an official translation of the degree project/thesis into either language. 
  • The applicant may also submit one published, peer-reviewed article. 
  • A research plan in Swedish or English of a maximum of 5 pages.

Admissions decisions cannot be appealed. 

Doctoral studentships financed through research projects can be announced other times during the year.

  • Your research plan should state the research question you will examine/investigate and which theoretical perspectives and scientific method/s will be used.
  • The research plan should also include a brief research summary.
  • The research plan should clearly align to one or more of the departmental research groups so that the doctoral student will have a supervisor within the area of expertise of the dissertation.
    See our research groups
  • When we receive an application, we evaluate if the research plan can be completed within the 4 year PhD period (or 2 years for a licentiate degree), which is the maximum time allowed.  In addition, we evaluate if the department has faculty who are qualified to supervise the research plan. This is done through seeing how well the research plan matches with the expertise of our research groups.

The research plans are made anonymous before they are evaluated and faculty members who could be biased in their evaluations (for example, were the applicant’s former supervisor) are excluded from evaluating those applications.

Therefore, it is not possible for applicants to contact a faculty member about their application.

Your research plan is evaluated based on the following criteria which are stated in the General Study Plan for the PhD programme in Education.

  1. Stringency of the research question and analysis of earlier work and of the research plan.
  2. Familiarity with the research area of the intended research plan.
  3. Methodological and theoretical understanding and the degree to which reflexivity is reached in the texts.
  4. The qualities of planned research in relation to what it contributes to the discipline.
  5. Ability to express themselves both written and verbally in an academic setting. 
  6. The planned study’s feasibility within the allotted time. 

Criteria 1

The first criteria carries the greatest weight when the evaluators read through the research plan. One could say that that the research question as well as the aims of the research plan sets the tone for the reading of a research plan. You should briefly describe, from a theoretical perspective, which phenomena/field of study you intend to investigate as well as how your work will contribute to this area. We will evaluate how you have formulated your aims and if your research question(s) could lead to credible results. In formulating the aims of your study, you will demonstrate your academic abilities or it will reveal a lack of rigor. In the research questions and aims you will demonstrate your ability to plan a research project within the field of pedagogy in relation to pervious research.

If the research questions or aims are unclear or too broad and do not reflect a theoretical nor methodological perspective, the research proposal will be scored much lower on both this first criteria as well as other following criteria. It is very rare for an application to receive low point values on the first criteria and then higher point values on the remaining criteria. The aims and research questions as well as the description of phenomena/field of study should be your main focus and take the most time when developing your research plan.

Be aware that a general or completely descriptive aims and research questions will most likely receive lower point values than analytically formulated questions and research interests which demonstrate the ability to investigate complex phenomena.  

Criteria 2

In this criteria an applicant should demonstrate familiarity with the pedagogical research relevant to the chosen phenomena/field of study. You should provide evidence that you have read relevant literature and should include relevant and current references/research in your research plan. In this way, you should show that you have conducted a systematic literature review of your chosen phenomena/research question. Another aspect that will be evaluated within this criteria will be your ability to argue that your research, in relation to current publications, is necessary within the field. It is therefore also important that your research connects to one or more of the research groups at the department so that we can provide a research environment and supervision which relates to your interests.

Criteria 3

Here we evaluate your ability to choose a theoretical perspective and methodology that will help you reach your research goals, specified in your aims, and that can be used to answer your research questions. You should also demonstrate that you can discuss and argue/reflect over the other theories and methodologies that you considered using and why you have selected those stated in your research plan. In addition, use theory to identify and define the aspect of the phenomena/field of study that you intend to study. We will assess if you use relevant references related to the theory/perspective and method you intend to use, as well as if you use theoretical terms in an adequate and coherent manner. 

Criteria 4

Here you should demonstrate the need for new knowledge in relation to pedagogy as a discipline, as well as your creative abilities. Your interest in pedagogical research can be scientific/theoretical or empirical. You can choose a research question that leads to the further development of pedagogy as a discipline or a research question which is empirically grounded in an area. We will assess your ability to present arguments in support of your research and if the aims can in fact be reached in the way you have designed your study. It is therefore important to not only describe your plans for your questionnaire, literature review, or interviews; you should try to find an analytical and research perspective connected to the phenomena you will study which can be substantiated in the theoretical focus of your research question. In Swedish pedagogical research, it is important to not base your research question or phenomena in what can be found in political or administrative arenas, rather it should be grounded in a research perspective.

Criteria 5

In this criteria we assess your ability to express yourself correctly in an academic setting in English and/or Swedish (Previous degree projects must be written in English or Swedish. Those written in Swedish must include an abstract in English. Applicant interviews are conducted in either English or Swedish, depending on the language ability of the applicant. The abstract test is written in English only). We assess your verbal and written language abilities in how you are able to communicate in clear and concise manner and if you have followed the expected academic conventions such as referencing and the defining of terms.

Criteria 6

Here we conduct an overall assessment of if the study can practically be completed during the allowed 4 year PhD period (or 2 years for a licentiate degree) and with the supervision resources that the department can offer as well as within the research group the study is connected to. 

Please note that if you are planning to conduct data collection abroad, you must locate external financing to cover your travel costs. The department is not able to cover these costs. It can also be difficult to combine lengthy data collection projects with required course work so be sure to consider if your research plan will be possible to complete with the time allowed. 

We do not accept PhD applicants who plan to visit/collect data in countries or regions included on the Swedish Foreign Ministry travel warning list: http://www.regeringen.se/uds-reseinformation/ud-avrader/

In addition, we do not accept PhD projects which require interpreter services. 

Those applicants who move on to the second round of review will be contacted for an interview where they will asked to describe their project in English and will need to write an abstract of an article in English, within an hour time limit, thereby further demonstrating their academic abilities in English.

Where can I find inspiration for my research plan?

To begin with, read through some of the recently published dissertations in Stockholm University's database DiVA

Last updated: 2026-02-06

Source: Department of Education

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