Three PhD fellowships have just been advertised in our department (deadline Jan 31), and I’m hoping that one of them will go to a Digital Culture scholar. Our department includes Nordic, Comp. lit, Classics and Theatre Studies and Linguistics as well as Digital Culture, and the fellowships are awarded to the best applicants across those disciplines, so that means I’ll be very happy if we get some excellent applications from people in the field of Digital Culture.

Norwegian PhD fellowships are sweet deals if you can get them. As a PhD fellow in Norway you have about the same salary as a nurse or police officer for three years without any teaching or research assistant duties. But unlike PhD programs in some countries, you have to have a project description ready when you apply. In fact, the main thing we assess when selecting from the pool of candidates is the five page project description. Does it seem realistic that it could be completed in three years? How well grounded is it in existing theory and scholarship? Does the applicant appear to know the field? Is there a clear plan for how the research will be conducted? Are any ethical issues addressed?

The other things we look at are your grade from your MA degree. The rules state that an A or a B qualifies you for acceptance to a PhD program, but in reality very few candidates are accepted who don’t have an A. I’ve seen candidates with B on their MAs accepted if they have peer-reviewed scholarly publications in addition to their MA thesis (could be on the same topic, but a publication in addition to the actual thesis itself) – and I suppose a really, really exceptional project description might weigh up for a B on the MA, though I’ve not seen that happen in the three years I’ve been on the committee.

Here’s a description of the application process I wrote a couple of years ago. Things are more or less the same now.

If you’re interested in applying, read the advertisement and get in touch.