French Institute for Demographic Studies Doctoral Studentship

Publish Date: Mar 03, 2016

Deadline: May 12, 2016

French Institute for Demographic Studies Doctoral Studentship

INED and iPOPs Labex are seeking to recruit 6 doctoral students for a period of 3 years.
The doctoral students will work at INED (Paris, France) and will conduct their research in one of the 11 units.
The research projects presented by applicants must correspond to the research themes and methodological approaches of the iPOPs laboratory of excellence: family dynamics and ageing; social, gender and intergenerational inequalities

Conditions of eligibility

The following conditions apply to applicants and all mentors.

1. The applicant must fulfill the following three criteria:

  • Applicants must hold (or complete during the current academic year 2015-2016) a Master’s degree (M2) or equivalent in a discipline related to the population sciences and qualifying them for admission to a PhD programme in a French or foreign university.
  • Applicants must be enrolled (first enrolment) in a doctoral programme in a French or foreign university for the academic year 2016-2017.
  • Applicants must have the backing of at least 2 mentors, including their thesis supervisor(s). At least one mentor must be an INED researcher (see mentor researcher list in the Appendix). We recommend that the INED mentor be recognized as thesis supervisor or cosupervisor by the doctoral university the student is enrolled at. This last criterion is not an application requirement but will be taken into account in application assessment.

Applicants are asked to call on INED researchers directly. Some researchers have already indicated interest in advising students in connection with a specific thesis topic, an original dataset, or because a given thesis topic would fit well into a developing unit project. Applicants are free to consult INED researcher statements of interest but should understand that the exclusive purpose of these statements is to facilitate contact between them and mentors. Applicants whose thesis topic ties into topics indicated in mentor researchers’ statements of interest are assessed according to the same criteria as all others. See the Contact and subject for a hosting5 There are no criteria in terms of age or nationality.

2. Applicant mentors must fulfill the following criterion:

  • Each INED and external mentor can accept at most two doctoral students with INED-iPOPs contracts at the start of the 2016-2017 academic year (this includes students recruited through this call for applications).

Mandatory information and documents

All the information and documents required for the application must be in French and/or English.

1. Information and documents to be provided by applicants

In order for the application to be complete, applicants are required to:

a) Enter all the information requested on the call platform (see section 5) in the following tabs: identity, university, INED hosting, thesis project, mentors, other information, application submission. Applicants must fill in all the fields, including a summary of their thesis project, a description of their funding needs (in addition to salary), and a schedule of the main phases in their thesis research.

b) Submit all the following documents on the call platform:

  • A curriculum vitae
  • A cover letter
  • A thesis project, not to exceed 5 pages. The project statement is to be drafted by the applicant, in close collaboration with their mentors. It must include the following:
    • The scientific context of the thesis topic (use bibliographical references to demonstrate topic importance and originality)
    • Research objectives and hypotheses
    • Methodology (data sources, planned data collection, statistical methods that will be used)
    • Main findings expected
    • Work plan and schedule. A provisional thesis defence date must be indicated
    • Assessment of research risks and proposal of solutions. This section requires particular care (recommended length: 1 page) and should only be written up after detailed consultation with mentors. It will allow the committee to assess the student’s ability to anticipate difficulties inherent in the proposed research project and to find solutions to problems that arise (related, for example, to access to sources, data collection, funding searches, learning and applying analytic methods, writing difficulties [especially for applicants who will be not be writing in their native language], etc.). The impact in terms of scheduling delays or possibly dropping a segment of the proposed research outline should be indicated.
    • Master’s (M2 or equivalent) thesis. Applicants who have not yet defended their Master’s thesis should attach a draft of it (marked “draft” on the first page).
    • Master’s thesis defence report. Applicants who do not have a report must file a statement from their Master’s thesis supervisor specifying the reason the document cannot be submitted (e.g., Master’s thesis defence scheduled later than the application deadline; thesis defended at an institution that does not use reports at the Master’s level).
    • Transcript of grades for the first and second semesters of the M2 programme. Applicants who do not have their second-semester grades yet should submit those for the first semester together with a statement from the M2 programme supervisor specifying that second-semester grades cannot be transmitted before the application deadline. If applicant’s university has specified in a single statement that neither a thesis report or second-semester grades can be provided, the applicant should submit this document twice: once in the thesis defence report box and once in the Master’s programme grades box.

Please note: Applicants who have submitted a draft of their Master’s thesis and/or statements in place of a thesis defence report and/or their second-semester Master’s programme grades can file either the primary documents (i.e., definitive Master’s thesis, thesis defence report, second-semester grades) or a new version of the statements by 2 June 2016 at midday (12:00 pm, Paris time).

2. Documents to be provided by the INED mentor

For the application to be complete, the INED mentor is required to:

a) Enter all information requested by the call platform (see Section 5) in the section entitled “Mentor Section”.

b) Submit the following documents on the call platform:

  • A completed mentor form6 for each mentor (one form per mentor is mandatory). Access to the call platform is restricted to INED mentors; it is therefore their responsibility to collect completed forms from non-INED mentors and file them on the site. The form can be downloaded on the call site7 .

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

https://www.ined.fr/en/research/PhD-students/call-applications/

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Study Levels

Doctoral

Opportunity Types

Scholarships

Eligible Countries

International