European University Institute Doctoral Fellowship in History and Civilization 2018, Italy

Applicants are selected for interviews on the basis of their academic record and their research proposal. Your research proposal shows that you are ready to write a PhD dissertation that can be supervised at the EUI. The proposal must be written in English or French and must be no longer than 2500 words (including footnotes, references and bibliography). Longer proposals may be excluded from further consideration.

The proposal should outline the project that you wish to pursue in your PhD dissertation. It should demonstrate command of the state of the art in the field (with references to the literature) and of research methodology within the discipline, formulate a research question and include a short bibliography. Where appropriate it should also include the theory or hypotheses that will be examined or a description of the empirical content and sources of the research project.

The policy of the EUI is not to offer individual guidance and advice on dissertation proposals. You should not contact potential supervisors and ask them to support your application or to provide you with advice. You can instead read the information on research themes supervised by the department and by individual professors. In the application form and in your research proposal you can indicate one or more professors who you think could supervise your dissertation.

Please also consider the following points when framing your research proposal for a PhD in History and Civilization:

1. The Department focuses primarily on the History of Europe from XIV century to the present, and will not therefore consider proposals on the Classical World or the Early Medieval Period.
2. We particularly welcome projects on comparative history and transnational history, as well as global history (namely Europe and the World). This should be taken into account by prospective students when formulating a research proposal. Though not refused categorically, projects strictly dealing with national histories do not fit with our priorities.
3. You should identify a research question that you aim to explore and present your argument with clarity, while also attempting to demonstrate the feasibility of the project. Please remember that ours is a four-year programme and you will need to limit your subject, explain its rationale and clearly focus your research and writing.
4. The title of your proposal should be well-defined and fully express its content. It is equally important to produce a good abstract, which will be included in the summary of your application file. Your abstract will be read first and faculty members will often decide on that basis whether to read your full application more carefully.
5. You are expected to elaborate on the approaches, methodologies and tools that you are planning to adopt and explore. Besides giving an overview of the relevant bibliography for your topic and underlining why the project is innovative vis-à-vis the existing literature, you also are advised to briefly write about the nature and accessibility of the primary sources you will need.
6. We also encourage you to produce a brief statement detailing your particular historical interests, and the ways you think the EUI’s Department of History and Civilization—both individually and communally—is suited to support you in working towards your research goals.
7. The overall length of your proposal must not exceed 2500 words (including footnotes and references). Longer proposals may be excluded from further consideration.