PhD Colloquium

1. General Information and Dates

CIS PhD Students are invited to participate in the CIS PhD Colloquium during the first two semesters of their studies. The main elements of the PhD colloquium include:

1) the preparation and presentation of a research plan (first presentation without, second presentation with supervisors)
2) the attendance at the colloquium for two consecutive semesters and provision of written and oral feedback and questions to their peers.

Each research design is evaluated by a committee consisting of the main supervisor as well as two further CIS professors or, in exceptional cases, external professors or other senior researchers. All research designs obtain one of four possible judgments: research design accepted; minor corrections; major corrections; research design rejected.

The CIS PhD Colloquium is generally held bi-weekly on Thursdays from 14:00- 17:00 at the external pageDepartment of Political Science (IPZ) of the University of Zürich in external pageZurich Oerlikon (Affolternstrasse 56). Presentation dates will be scheduled and communicated before the start of the semester. Get in touch with if you have not yet received an email from the organizer.

 

2. Registration and Materials

Please register online for the course via UZH module booking. You will then automatically join the OLAT group for the PhD Colloquium. In case the registration does not add you to OLAT automatically, you can also join the OLAT group manually.

 

3. Research Design

Length: The maximum is 30.000 characters, excluding references (~ 20 pages)
Deadline: The research design to be presented must be submitted to all members of the Colloquium Committee (only second presentation), to all participants and Hanno Degner () by email no later than 7 days before the respective presentation.


4. Presentations

All PhD students will present their research design once in the first semester, and once in their second semester. (Some flexibility is possible; the first presentation can also take place at the very beginning of the second semester and the second presentation at the end of the second semester, the second presentation can also take place at the beginning of the third semester.) Students will attend the presentations of all other PhD students in the first two semesters. However, they would offer more extensive verbal feedback on the first version of the proposal (i.e., when it is presented to the students only as a work in progress). They will attend the second presentation to the committee but provide verbal feedback only after the committee members.

Length: Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. We then have 40 minutes for the discussion and a 5 min break.

Note: It is the PhD students’ responsibility to ensure that for the second presentation, all three members of their PhD Colloquium Committee receive the research design and attend the presentation.

 

5. Participation: Comments on Other Research Designs

Submitted research designs are available on OLAT under the “PhD Proposals” folder.

The new format of two presentations will require students to provide written comments on both versions of the prospectus (1st work-in-progress presentation and second defense presentation).

Length of the feedback: About 1 page. Should include at least one paragraph each on:
a) research question
b) theory
c) method
d) contribution to existing literature.

Deadline: Comments must be added 48 hours before the presentation on OLAT. Please use the “Forum” in OLAT and upload your comments as PDF files.

You may also download this informaiton as a DownloadPDF (PDF, 86 KB).

 

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