Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Partnership

In July 2010, the European EACEA (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency) chose the consortium “Cultural Studies in Literary Interzones” among 160 applications for the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Doctorates. This consortium was created by the following universities: Bergamo (coordinator, Italy), Perpignan (France), Tübingen (Germany), Jawaharlal Nehru (India) and Federal Fluminense (Brazil). It is the only Humanities program among the 13 universities selected by the European Commission.

This Erasmus Mundus Doctorate offers a mobility program between the five funding universities, which deliver diplomas, and eleven other partner universities. It is open to students from any country. Fellowships are available: during the three years of the Program doctorants / researchers receive 2000 Euros net by month, as well as a travel and installation costs allowance. The young researchers are offered to enter a rich and complex cultural ground and thus develop innovative transversal research methods in the field of Cultural Studies.

The Interzones Doctorate Program emphasizes the richness of cultural and university exchanges, thus presenting the newest and most interesting aspects of Cultural Studies and Compared Literature, and bringing forth the invention of new concepts which will impregnate 21st century thought. The consortium does not wish to impose new theories which would replace existing theoretical approaches, but rather encourages the young researchers to examine questions demanding new and complex approaches.

The mobility agenda of the Interzones Consortium creates an international research laboratory, alive and unpredictable, composed of the partner research centres. The main objective of the program is to transform gifted students into “global academics”. The future Interzones’ Doctors explore cultural and linguistic diversities as the object of their study as well as in their professional and living practices. They thus embody a new image of a global Professor, acutely immersed in other cultures, who experiments the richness of various literary and artistic forms and different modes of thought.

Students who would like to apply to the Interzones Doctoral Program must possess a Master’s degree (or equivalent) in the fields of Comparative Literature, Communication, Cultural Studies of Visual Anthropology. They must master English, French and a third European language among Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian, Polish or Catalan. During the six consecutive semesters, the young researchers study in three or four universities. The first induction semester is necessarily spent in Bergamo, the coordinating university. Then researchers must spend semesters 2 and 3, and 5 and 6 in two of the five degree awarding universities.

Depending on the nature of the research project, doctoral students choose to study in one of the eleven other partner institutions during the fourth semester: Aix-en-Provence, Barcelona, Brown, Buenos Aires, Krakow, Mexico, Paris 3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle, Paris 10, Saint Petersburg, Sydney  or  Zurich. At the end of the six semesters, doctoral students must have obtained 180 ECTS: 120 for their doctoral thesis and 60 for extra-curricular activities such as publishing articles, organizing symposiums or teaching at University level. The successful doctoral students obtain a PhD diploma from the two degree-awarding universities where they have studied, as well as a mention from the other partner university where they have spent a semester. Students cannot choose degree-awarding universities in their country of origin, or in the country where they have previously graduated.

The Academic Council, composed of representatives from the five founding universities, of six representatives from the eleven partner universities and of one external expert, selects applications during the consortium’s yearly meeting in January according to excellence standards and criteria defined and approved by the European Union. Selected applications are then evaluated by the European Commission. The school year begins in September, according to the European University calendar.

For additional information, please look at the Interzones’ website: http://www.mundusphd-interzones.eu/

If you have additional questions, you may send an email to the Program’s Coordinating Assistant, Dr. Elena Mazzoleni: interzones.phd@unibg.it