Training activities
The Doctoral Programme minimum length is three years. By the end of the programme, students will be expected to have obtained a total amount of 180 credits, approximately 60 per year, corresponding to 1500 hours of work per year.
Doctoral Programme activities are divided into:
a. Mandatory activities for all PhD students. These include cycles of seminars on methodology and general research skills.
b. Optional activities based on the different curricula and research interests. These include single workshops and seminars, series of colloquia and conferences.
Compulsory modules
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Transferable skills: Supplementary training programme for PhD students and research fellows, organized by UniMore International Research Office/ Europe Direct/ ASTER/Dermocenter. Seminars and classes include: Projecting research in Europe: Project cycle management, Action Plan Structure, Financial Plan, Actors/ Promoting the project and its findings; Dissemination and Communication Activities/ EU funding for active citizenship; Evaluation of research in Italy: between quality and quantity; Access to academic literature: open access vs paywall; Business Planning/ The Innovation ecosystem of Emilia Romagna: professional and entrepreneurial specialized courses for researches and and PhD students, Outreach, Public Engagement, Technology Transfer, intellectual propriety rights;
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Communication Skills: Academic Discourse. English for academic purposes. Usually, modules include: Academic Discourse; Writing a dissertation; Writing an abstract ; Presenting your Research: Face-to-face and Online Presentations; Writing a Review;
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IT and statistics’ resources in the Humanities. This includes classes on: the University’s library and electronic resources; Basic IT skills: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access; Institutional repository of undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD theses: MoreThesis; Institutional repository of Iris research, open access and introduction to copyright; Introduction to Statistics for the Humanities;
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Research methodology in human and social sciences. Usually it includes lectures on: Dealing critically with sources and developing interpretations in the human sciences; Generalization and defining latent dimensions; Interdependences in the Social Sciences and Humanities: a sociological consideration; Interaction Analysis as an interdisciplinary approach; Corpus Linguistics and the humanities; data science; qualitative research methods
In addition, an annual programme of seminars, seminar cycles and conferences is included. The optional activities’ programme also includes an annual Summer School, which aims to dedicate a whole week to topics related to digital communication and Digital Humanities. All these activities are to be considered optional: students will direct their choices according to their curriculum and individual research lines.
Students are expected to attend at least 40 hours of optional activities during their first year and an additional 40 hours during their second year.
In case of absence, students will be able to attend teaching and seminar activities in the following year through an individual study plan. This will be based on the teaching modules of the Doctorate Programme or on the advanced-level learning activities offered by each Department. Alternatively, students may be asked to carry out an individual piece of work under the supervision of their tutor, who also supervises their individual research activities.
In order to be admitted to the second and third year of the Doctoral Programme, each PhD student has to write a final report by the end of the academic year. Candidates will be admitted to the following year on condition that the evaluation of their final report is positive.
Final report must include:
a) a report on the research carried out during the academic year (literature review, definition of methodology, findings etc.);
b) a report on teaching modules they have attended (including both compulsory modules and optional seminars);
c) a list of conference presentations and any publications (manuscripts soon to be published are accepted).
Once the report is countersigned by its tutor, it will be sent for approval to the Doctoral Board by the 31st of October.