THE EUROPEAN PH.D. NETWORK IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LANGUAGE, AND MIND
A joint doctoral program of six European universities
This document has been prepared in collaboration with the partner universities. The authors are
Professor Gabriel Sandu and Professor Heta Pyrhönen from the Doctoral Programme in Philosophy,
Arts, and Society at the University of Helsinki.
Contact information:
Professor Gabriel Sandu, Theoretical Philosophy, Vice Director of the Doctoral Program in
Philosophy, Arts, and Society
gabriel.sandu@helsinki.fi
Professor Heta Pyrhönen, Comparative Literature, Director of the Doctoral Program in Philosophy,
Arts, and Society
heta.pyrhonen@helsinki.fi
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1. OVERALL OBJECTIVES
The European Ph.D. -Network in Philosophy is a joint scholarly program aimed at promoting the
scientific quality and the internationalization of doctoral education, as well as providing doctoral
students enhanced career possibilities. The participants of this network are the University of
Bucharest, the University of Helsinki, the University of Modena & Reggio Emilia, Paris 1, and
Uppsala University.
For the participating universities, the European Ph.D. Net in Philosophy offers a distinctly
international curriculum as well as the organizational network for obtaining either a binational
doctoral degree under a Cotutelle agreement or a doctoral degree under an Agreement on
Educational Cooperation. Hence the doctoral students selected to the program pursue their doctoral
studies both at their home university and in one of the partner universities.
As a distinguished framework for international doctoral studies, the overall objectives of the Ph.D.Net
in Philosophy are
• to facilitate joint supervision within its international network and to award binational degrees
according to the Cotutelle agreement or a national degree under the Agreement on
Educational Cooperation,
• to offer a highly structured international curriculum and a stay abroad of approximately
three to nine months as part of the Cotutelle agreement or the Agreement on Educational
Cooperation,
• to integrate the program’s doctoral students into national and international academic
communities. At the end of the program’s cycle, they have established a network of contacts in
all the participating institutions as well as with the Net’s supervisors and student colleagues,
• to acquaint the program’s doctoral students with state-of-the-art theories, methodologies,
approaches, and concepts in the fields of contemporary philosophy,
• to provide the students with multiple formats for feedback and dialogue,
• to monitor closely the progress of each student’s writing process,
• to encourage independent research from early stage on by fostering publication and
conference experience on national and international levels,
• to provide ample opportunity to acquire academic and practical qualifications such as
systematic training in academic teaching and other practical and professional skills,
• to provide career coaching for students in the last phase of their doctoral studies,
• to foster and enhance the supervision skills and practices of the program’s supervisors, thus
contributing to the promotion of best practices at their home universities.
The particular strength of the Ph.D. Net in Philosophy is that it integrates doctoral students into the
research process from the start. It designs research training with the whole research process – all of its
aspects and phases – in mind. Furthermore, what is highly unique is that students benefit from
international co-supervision.
STRATEGIES OF DOCTORAL TRAINING
The research training program of the Net involves a number of different pedagogical formats:
1) The Net’s basic teaching strategy relies on close and regular monitoring of the doctoral students’
progress. The bedrock of its activities is the working seminar that is held twice a year. In this seminar
the students provide progress reports of their thesis projects as well as submitting chapter drafts. The
chapter drafts are the basis for discussions during which the students get detailed feedback from the
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Net’s professor supervisors and fellow doctoral students. Furthermore, in connection with the
working seminars, there are short master classes and workshops on topical issues in the field of
philosophy. The teaching staff of the particular university in which the working seminar is held holds
these master classes. In this way, the permanent staff and docents are integrated into the Net’s
activities.
2) The Net either arranges or participates in at least one conference a year in which the doctoral
students are expected to give a paper in front of an international audience. These conferences give
them the opportunity to practice basic academic skills and learn to network. What is more, the
conferences are open to all interested doctoral students of philosophy in the participating universities.
Hence, the activities of the Net also benefit the larger academic community in the participating
universities.
3) The Net organizes or participates in a yearly summer school the purpose of which is to enable the
students to increase and deepen their knowledge of key areas in contemporary philosophy. As all
doctoral students within the participating universities may apply to these summer schools, this form of
activity is yet one additional way in which the Net strengthens doctoral training in general.
The working seminars, master classes, international conferences, and summer schools are held
alternately at the five partner universities. Part of the training for the program’s doctoral students
involves their participation in planning and organizing these events whenever they take place at their
home university. This strategy teaches them basic skills in academic administration.
One of the primary goals is to make this program a permanent structure of the doctoral education
within the participating universities.
The Ph.D.Net curriculum is designed to meet the special needs of doctoral students by not only
ensuring academic quality of the doctoral degree but also by reducing the duration of doctoral studies
to three years.
THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF THE PH.D. NET IN PHILOSOPHY
The doctoral training of the European Ph.D.Net in Philosophy relies on the research profiles of the
participating institutions and consequently includes the following research areas:

Philosophy of Science: specific content of empirical and mathematical theories both in
relation to contemporary practices and to the historical development of the disciplines;
questions related to the role of models, mechanisms and kinds in both natural and social
sciences; scientific explanation, interdisciplinarity, ethics of science, science and democracy.

Epistemology: general theories of knowledge, justification and rationality and their application
to traditional philosophical questions; issues in social epistemology such as mutual
interaction, testimony, epistemic peers’ disagreement in subjective areas of discourse (e.g.
taste and aesthetics, ethics and philosophy); virtue epistemology, epistemic justice, epistemic
conditions of democracy.

Philosophical logic and philosophy of logic, mathematics and language: the study of various
systems of modal and epistemic logics and their applications to modal reasoning, the
reference of proper names, natural kinds and terms, and fictional discourse; philosophical
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accounts of logical and mathematical theories, forms of reasoning, and practices, both as such
and in relation to their applications.

Philosophy of mind and mind and society: collective intentionality, social ontology, moral
economy
Grounding the Net in the active research areas of the participating universities and their professor
supervisors creates coherence within this program. Most importantly, it provides a shared platform for
doctoral education. This shared basis not only guarantees the quality of supervision but also furthers
research on these areas by training new top-notch scholars.
PARTICIPATING UNIVERSITIES AND SUPERVISING PROFESSORS
Each of the six partner universities already has a strong doctoral program or graduate school in
philosophy. These programs make the Cotutelle agreements or Agreements on Educational
Cooperation possible, as the Net’s doctoral students have an established academic context that
integrates them into its activities during the students’ required stay in a partner institution.
Each participating university names a professor who is in charge for the Net, and this person serves as
the main supervisor in the program. In addition, if needed, the program will enlist other professors
and university lecturers as secondary supervisors from each university. This tactic is the means of
ensuring that each doctoral student has two expert supervisors in his or her field.
1. UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
Doctoral students in philosophy are enrolled in the multidisciplinary Doctoral Program in Philosophy,
Arts, and Society.
The department of theoretical philosophy has gained an outstanding reputation in philosophical logic,
philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. One cornerstone of its activities is the
continuation of the work of the renowned philosopher Jaakko Hintikka. The department of
philosophy taught in Swedish has a longstanding tradition in philosophical logic and Wittgenstein
studies initiated by G. H. von Wright and E. Stenius. The department hosts the Wittgenstein – von
Wright archives. The department of practical philosophy is internationally known for its contributions
to the philosophy and methodology of social sciences, research on ethical questions, and the
philosophy of action. Its work includes the study of general moral standards and basic human values
as well as branches of applied ethics. Social and political philosophy addresses such questions as the
proper ethical standards for institutions and the foundations and constitutive principles of
democracy. The department houses the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy
of the Social Sciences which investigates the transfer of scientific models from one discipline to
another, such as, for instance, the transfer of economic models to other social sciences and even
natural sciences. Another major research theme is the nature of explanation and evidence across
disciplinary boundaries and the integration of knowledge across fields. The center’s director,
Professor Uskali Mäki, is one of the founders of the philosophy of modern economics.
Professor in charge: Gabriel Sandu, professor of theoretical philosophy. His main research areas are
philosophical logic and philosophy of language. He has done research on theories of truth,
foundations of mathematics, and semantics for natural language. His more recent work involves the
interaction between logic and classical game theory. Professor Sandu has directed several projects
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funded by Finland’s Academy on philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and foundations of
mathematics. He is one of the founding fathers of the EUROCORE project LOGICCC (Logic for
Interaction, Communication, Computation and Cognition) launched by the ESF (2008-2011). He is a
member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, a member of the Academia Europea, and
the Vice-president of the Institut International de Philosophie. He is a member of the editorial board
of several key journals of logic, philosophy of science, and epistemology (e.g., Synthese, Theoria,
Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of Science).
Key publications: On the Methodology of Linguistics, with Jaakko Hintikka, Basil Blackwell, (1991),
Entre Logique et Langage, with F. Rivenc, Vrin, (2009), and Independence-Friendly Logic: A Gametheoretical Approach, with M. Sevenster and A. Mann, Cambridge University Press (2011). He has
written numerous articles published in such prestigious journals as Dialectica, Journal of Logic,
Language and Information, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Linguistics and Philosophy, Synthese,
The Monist, Theoria, and the Journal of Philosophy.
2. PARIS 1 (PANTHÉON SORBONNE) & INSTITUT D’HISTOIRE ET DE PHILOSOPHIE
DES SCIENCES ET DES TECHNIQUES
With eight hundred years of excellence to build on, the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne is
one of the largest universities in France today. The QS World University Ranking by Subject 2013
rated its philosophy department 26th in the world and 1st in France. The department’s policy is to
provide students with high-quality instruction in fundamental philosophical areas, most notably the
history of philosophy as well as all the main currents of contemporary philosophy. Moreover, it places
philosophical research in dialogue with the hard sciences, economics, and the social sciences. This
latter aspect is strengthened by the research done in Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences
et des techniques that focuses on such areas as logic and language, philosophy of mathematics,
physics, and complex systems.
Professors in charge: Jean Gayon & Marco Panza
Professor Gayon’s research concerns mainly the history of contemporary biology (evolution theory,
genetics, and biometrics), the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of science. His research is
mainly theoretical in nature, yet he has also discussed the moral, social, and political consequences of
the biological sciences such as questions of race and eugenics. Professor Gayon has been a senior
member of l’Institut Universitaire de France (1994 and 2010), a member of l’Académie Leopoldina
(Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina), and a member of l’Académie internationale
d'histoire des sciences. He has received the Prix Grammaticakis-Neuman de philosophie des sciences
in 2002.
Key publications: Darwinism's struggle for survival : heredity and the hypothesis of natural selection
(Cambridge University Press, 1998) Les Figures de la forme : philosophie biologique et théorie
esthétique, Eds. J. Gayon & J.J. Wunenburger, L'Harmattan (1992), Corps et individuation, Eds. J.
Gayon et P.F. Moreau, Éditions Universitaires de Dijon (1998), 1900 : Redécouverte des lois de
Mendel (with F. Gros, M. Morange & M. Veuille), Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences
(2000), L’épistémologie française 1830-1970, Eds. M. Bitbol & J. Gayon, Paris, Presses Universitaires
de France (2006), L’éternel retour de l’eugénisme, J. Gayon & D. Jacobi with M. C. Lorne, Presses
Universitaires de France (2006), Lamarck, philosophe de la nature, with P. Corsi, G. Gohau & S.
Tirard, Presses Universitaires de France (2006), French Studies in Philosophy of Science.
Contemporary Research in France, A. Brenner & J. Gayon, Springer (2009), Les fonctions : des
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organismes aux artéfacts, Eds. Jean Gayon & Armand de Ricqlès, Presses Universitaires de France
(2010).
Professor Panza’s research interests include the history and philosophy of mathematics, the
philosophy of science, and the history of science. He is a member of the Committee in charge of the
Paris-Nancy PhilMath workshop and one of the founders of the Association for the Philosophy of
Mathematical Practice as well as its board member. He is the director of the project The Interrogative
Model of Inquiry Meets Dynamic Logic, and a board member of de la Société Italienne d’Histoire
des Mathématiques.
Key publications: Nombres. Eléments de mathématiques pour philosophes, Diderot (1999), Il
problema di Platone. Un’introduzione storica alla filosofia della matematica, Carocci (2010), Plato’s
Problem: An Introduction to Mathematical Platoinism, PalgraveMacMillan, (2013), With Andrea
Sereni, Introduction à la Philosophie des Mathématiques, Flammarion (2013). His essays have
appeared in such journals as Epistemologia, Rivista di storia della scienza, Historia Mathematica,
Biologica, History and Philosophy of Logic, and Cahiers d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences.
3) UPPSALA UNIVERSITY
The department of philosophy in Uppsala is one of Sweden's leading philosophy departments. The
most recent evaluation rated the research at the Department of Philosophy as world-leading, among
the top 10% in the world within the same research field. The department has played a central role in
Swedish philosophy since the sixteenth century. Many key philosophers have been active there, such
as Christopher Jacob Boström, Axel Hägerström, Ingemar Hedenius, and Adolph Phalén. In the
beginning of the twentieth century the so-called Uppsala school exerted a great influence on legal
science. Later on the department has garnered fame for its research on logic. The department has
three different units: theoretical philosophy, practical philosophy, and aesthetics. Today, the
department’s research areas include the history of philosophy, logic and the philosophy of science,
practical philosophy, language philosophy, and the philosophy of culture.
Professor in charge: Matti Eklund. He has been the Chair Professor of Theoretical Philosophy from
July 2013. After receiving his doctorate at MIT in 2000, Eklund taught at William Paterson University
of New Jersey, University of Iceland, University of Colorado at Boulder, and, from 2005 to 2013, at
Cornell University. His research interests center on metaphysics, the philosophy of language and the
philosophy of logic. One special area of interest is the liar and sorites paradoxes, while another is
metaontology. Lately Eklund has worked on theories of truth, Bradley’s regress and the unity of the
proposition, and some issues at the intersection of philosophy of language and metaethics. Eklund
has been Editor in Chief of the Philosophical Review and is currently serving as chair of the Program
Committee of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association.
Key publications: Professor Eklund has published numerous articles in such prestigious journals as
Noûs, Analysis, Philosophical Stucies, Metaphysica, Synthèse, Analytic Philosophy, Oxford Studies in
Metaphysics, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly, and Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research. His essays have appeared in prominent edited works, for exampleThick
Concepts, Oxford University Press (2013), New Waves on Philosophy of Logic, Palgrave Macmillan
(2012), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language (2012), and Metametaphysics, Oxford
University Press (2009).
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4) UNIVERSITY OF MODENA AND REGGIO EMILIA
Doctoral students in philosophy are enrolled within the Doctoral School in “Scienze umanistiche”
and are affiliated to their supervisor’s department. This is usually either the Department of Culture
and Language Studies (Modena) or the Department of Education and Humanities (Reggio Emilia).
The teaching staff associated with the Doctoral School comprises specialists in various areas, ranging
from philosophy of mind and language, and epistemology, to aesthetics, philosophical anthropology,
and the history of ideas. They also have the opportunity to benefit from interaction with philosophers
engaged in the various research projects activated within Cogito-Mo and Cogito, which span across
epistemology, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of logic and mathematics.
Professor in charge: Annalisa Coliva. She specializes in the philosophy of mind and language,
epistemology, metaphysics and the history of analytic philosophy. She is the Associate Director of the
Research Centre in Philosophy (Cogito) and the Director (with C. Bagnoli) of its branch in Modena
(Cogito-Mo). She has held research grants at the University of Bologna, Fribourg (CH) and Modena,
as well as a Fulbright Research Fellowship at Columbia University (New York) and a Research
Fellowship at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University in the city of New
York, where she served as Chair of the Italian Academy Alumni Fellows Association. In 2006 and
2007 she benefited from an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, held at the University of
Heidelberg. She has held other international Fellowships and has been visiting Professor at Paris 7 in
2009 and at Scripps College (Claremont Colleges, California) in 2014. She is currently the principal
investigator of the research unit comprising Modena, Bologna and Trieste of the PRIN project
“Realism and objectivity”, funded by the Italian Minister of University and Research, and a member
of the steering committee of the European Epistemology Network.
Key publications: (with E. Sacchi) Singular Thoughts. Perceptual-Demonstrative and I-Thoughts
(2001), Moore and Wittgenstein: scepticism, certainty and common sense (Palgrave 2010), I concetti
(20062), (with E. Lalumera) Pensare. Leggi ed errori del ragionamento (2014), I modi del relativismo
(2009), Scetticismo. Paradosso, dubbio conoscenza (2012). She is the co-editor (with E. Picardi) of
Wittgenstein Today (2004), and editor of Filosofia analitica. Temi e problemi (2007), Mind, Meaning
and Knowledge: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright (OUP 2012), The Self and SelfKnowledge (OUP 2012), (with D. Moyal-Sharrock and V. Munz) Mind, Language and Action (De
Gruyter, forthcoming), of a special issue of Synthese on “Scepticism and justification” (2013), and of a
forthcoming special issue of Iride on “Disagreement”. She is the author of several articles that have
appeared in Italian and international journals.
5) UNIVERSITY OF BUKAREST
The Department of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest is the leading school in analytic
philosophy in Romania. The Department has a full program in philosophy covering all the cycles (BA,
PhD, post-doc). The Department offers an MA in Analytic Philosophy which is taught in English.
The University of Bucharest will host ECAP8 in August 28 through September 2. The President of
the ECAP8 and also of ESAP is Professor Mircea Dumitru. In the last ten years the Department of
Philosophy has organized every year the Bucharest Colloquium in Analytic Philosophy.
Professor in charge: Mircea Dumitru. His main research areas include philosophical logic, symbolic
logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. He is the President of ESAP and of ECAP8 which will
be held in Bucharest in August 2014.
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Key publications: On Incompleteness in Modal Logic. An Account through Second-Order Logic
(2001), Logic-Philosophic Explorations (2004), Words, Theories, and Things. Perspectives on Quine,
eds. Mircea Dumitru and Constantin Stoenescu (2009), Guest Editor of the volume The Philosophy
of Saul Kripke, in Romanian Journal of Analytic Philosophy (2012), Truth, eds. Mircea Dumitru and
Gabriel Sandu (2013), Metaphysics, Meaning, and Modality. Themes from Kit Fine, forthcoming
with Oxford University Press.
6) UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN
The Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Groningen has a long standing status as one of the
most prominent Dutch philosophy departments and being world-leading in the fields it focuses on,
most notably philosophy of science, social ontology, ethics and history of philosophy. The research
programs involved all received the highest possible scores in the latest research evaluation. Groningen
hosts a Graduate School of Philosophy that combines a highly selective research master program with
a consecutive PhD program.
Professor in charge: Fred Keijzer. He has been director of the Graduate School of Philosophy since
November 2011. He received his PhD from Leiden University. His broader research interests center
on philosophy of mind, cognition and biology. More specifically his research is on embodied and
biological approaches to cognition and neuroscience.
Key publications: Moving and sensing without input and output (2015); (with M. van Duijn & P.
Lyon) What nervous systems do: Early evolution, input-output, and the Skin Brain Thesis (2013);
The Sphex story: How the cognitive sciences kept repeating an old and questionable anecdote (2013);
Meaningful meaning: Changing relations between science and religion (2012); (with P. Calvo) Plants:
Adaptive behavior, root brains and minimal cognition (2011); (with P. Lyon) The human stain: Why
cognitivism can’t tell us what cognition is & what it does (2007); (with M. van Duijn & D. Franken)
Principles of minimal cognition: Casting cognition as sensorimotor coordination (2006);
Representation and Behavior (MIT Press, 2001).
The participating universities have been chosen in light of the following four criteria:
1) the scientific quality of the institution that has been verified by national and international
evaluations;
2) the institution’s scientific profile and the suitability of the research foci with those of other
participating institutions;
3) the mutual compatibility of existing structures of doctoral education;
4) former academic cooperation between participants.
These four criteria ensure that the Ph.D. Net in Philosophy has an excellent chance at success.
GOVERNANCE
The Steering Board
The steering board of the Net consists of professors or faculty members from the participating
universities. Each university names a professor or a faculty member in charge for the net, and this
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person serves as its board member as well as the main supervisor in the program. If board members
are unable to attend a steering committee meeting, they can send a faculty member in their stead.
Members from participating universities take turns in serving as directors. During the first cycle the
director is from the University of Helsinki.
The board has a coordinator who keeps the minutes.
Board meetings are held in connection of the working seminars. Among the issues dealt are:
• as each student has a supervisor from his/her home university and from a participating
university, the board agrees upon the second, “external” supervisor (they can be other scholars
than the participating professors);
• oversees that the Cotutelle agreements or Educational cooperation agreements are in order;
• designs the study calendar (the induction week, the dates of the working seminars,
conferences, master classes, and summer schools);
• keeps track of the students’ progress and intervenes if problems arise;
• participates in raising funds.
The coordinator’s administrative tasks include:
• administering the Cotutelle agreements or Educational cooperation agreements and
keeping track of them;
• keeping minutes at the board meetings;
• helping organize the students’ study periods at a participating university;
• helping organize all the events of the Net;
• drawing up the program for the events;
• taking care of hotel reservations;
• helping to oversee doctoral defenses so that the Cotutelle or Educational cooperation
agreement requirements are fulfilled.
The Director of the Net for the first three-year cycle is Professor Gabriel Sandu from the University
of Helsinki.
The University of Bukarest has pledged to fund the coordinator for the first three-year cycle of the
Net.
CHOICE OF STUDENTS
Each participating university chooses one to two students for the duration of a three-year cycle. In
case a university does not have two suitable students at the beginning of a cycle, it can select the
second student at the beginning of the cycle’s second year. The university in charge of the Net may
choose three students for a cycle. The Net invites applications for its positions from graduate students
in philosophy in the partner universities. The selection to the program takes place according to the
criteria set by the steering board. In light of these criteria, each university chooses its own participants;
yet in cases in which making the decision is difficult, the steering board has the final say.
The application period for the first cycle is in September 2015.
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Upon completing his or her studies, each student is awarded either a binational degree under the
Cotutelle agreement or a degree under the Agreement on Educational Cooperation. These degrees
conform to the rules and regulations of both partner universities.
FUNDING
The Net does not provide funding for students. The students selected to the program must secure
funding from their home university or an academic foundation. Such a scholarship tides them over
while they are on their study period in one of the participating universities.
Running the Ph.D. Net in Philosophy requires funds for the following functions:
1) induction week at the beginning of cycle (3 days)
2) twice a year working seminars
3) one conference a year
4) one summer school a year/ once during the three-year cycle
5) students’ travel and accommodation costs
6) supervisors travel and accommodations costs
(7 funding for publications)
The home university pays for the students’
• travel costs and accommodation during working seminars, conferences, and summer
schools
• possible conference and summer school fees
• possible tuition or raised salary (when a student is on his/her study period in a participating
university)
Some of the travel costs may be covered by Erasmus agreements for doctoral students.
The supervising professors travel on Erasmus agreements which also cover their accommodation.
(Notice that a second supervisor may be expected to make an extra trip to a students’ defense.)
When a university is hosting a working seminar, it is expected to cover:
• the facilities;
• one dinner for all participants;
• one dinner for the professors;
• modest refreshments (coffee, tea and such) during the working day as well as one or two
lunches.
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APPENDIX:
A PRELIMINARY THREE-YEAR PH.D.NET CYCLE STUDY CALENDAR
I Year
2015 November
Induction seminar (2 to 3 days) Helsinki (in this seminar all the students present outlines of their
projects)
2016 April
First Working Seminar (Uppsala) (From this point onwards, students must submit drafts of their
thesis work)
A conference, a summer school, or a focused workshop would be a welcome addition to the working
seminars. Often a partner university knows that there will be held, for example, a conference at a
certain point during the academic year. If possible, we could simply annex ourselves to such a
conference. Yet it would advisable to plan these events as far ahead as possible – or, to agree on who
will be responsible for providing something in this slot.
II Year
2016 October-November
Second Working Seminar (Bucharest)
2017 January
Third Working Seminar (Paris I)
The same comment that was made above applies here as well.
III Year
2017 October-November
Fourth Working Seminar (Groeningen)
2018 January-February
Fifth Working Seminar (Modena)
2018 November
Sixth, Closing Working Seminar (Helsinki)
No conference or such event is needed in the last year, as a closing working seminar will take its place.
Conferences and other events taking place at the participating universities are often integrated into the
Net’s calendar.
It is worth thinking about the possibility of turning conference and summer school papers into an
edited volume.
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Working seminars may include short workshops on various issues. For example, towards the end of
the cycle, a workshop on “post-doctoral life” would be a good idea.
WORKING SEMINARS
At the beginning of each working seminar, each student gives a progress report to the whole group.
This report consists of representing the dissertation’s table of contents and indicating what the student
has worked on since the last meeting.
Yet for the most part, the working seminars consist of discussion of student papers. Each submits well
in advance a portion of his or her thesis (approximately 20 pages). During the discussion the student
gets feedback from the supervisors and student colleagues. Each is assigned a fellow student who
keeps a record of the feedback, a practice that helps the student whose work is discussed to reflect
upon the feedback after the session.
All selected students are expected to participate in all events organized by the Net. Presence at
working seminars is mandatory.
The induction week will serve as an opportunity to discuss criteria and standards in receiving a
doctoral degree in philosophy. As a general guideline, PhDnet students who miss more than 30 % of
the PhDnet events (unexcused absence), fail the requirements for obtaining a bi-national degree
(Cotutelle). Furthermore, active participation during all PhDnet events is mandatory. Also, in addition
to taking the minutes, the students should write a 1-page summary after each symposium, outlining
how they have understood the feedback that the PhDnet professors gave them. They are supposed to
hand in both the minutes and the written feedback.
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