A prerequisite for obtaining a PhD from the Faculty of Human Sciences is a PhD programme with a duration of at least two semesters. Doctoral candidates should be enrolled as PhD students at the University of Cologne for the duration of the programme.

Once you have received the official letter of admission (“Zulassungsbescheid”) from the Doctoral Office, you can enrol as a PhD student with the Student Application and Registration Office (International Office). The Student Application and Registration Office will also hand out your student ID.

You can be enrolled as a PhD student for a maximum of 12 semesters. After 12 semesters, you would normally be taken off the register by the Student Application and Registration Office. In exceptional circumstances, however, you may be eligible for an extension of up to two semesters. To apply for this extension, you will have to present the Student Application and Registration Office a written statement from the Doctoral Office, detailing why the extension is necessary for you to complete your PhD thesis.

In the event of deregistration as a PhD student by the University of Cologne’s Student Application and Registration Office, your admission to the programme itself will still be valid, meaning that you will still be able to finish your thesis at the Faculty of Human Sciences even if your name has already been taken off the register.

Unless your letter of admission contains specific provisos, the planning and design of your research project is your own responsibility and should happen in accordance with the agreements made with your supervisor or team of supervisors.

Your dissertation can have one of several forms:

• As a monographic dissertation or thesis (monograph)
• As a monograph-based dissertation with partial publication. Here, you have the opportunity to write a monograph, where some of the research results have already been published separately before the entire dissertation has been submitted, without needing to apply for extra permission.
  When you do submit your dissertation, the already published parts should be referenced in a specific section so that the examiners know exactly what parts were made available publicly before.
• As a publication-based dissertation. The "compilation" thesis consists of several separate research theses as well as a cover text that puts the research papers in a thematically and methodologically coherent context.
  As a rule, the individual research papers must be peer-reviewed and published in relevant scientific journals. The doctoral candidate must be first author in at least two of the research papers and the articles have to be accepted for publication by the journal.
  With regard to adequate scope and extent of your role in this process (e.g. how many articles do you need to have published or (co-)authored?), there can be differences between the various disciplines at the Faculty of Human Sciences. Please ask your supervisor(s) for guidance on the matter.

If you have written your dissertation together with other authors, your thesis must contain a separate section outlining your individual contribution to the co-operatively collected data and research. This applies to both publication-based ("compilation") theses and monograph-based dissertations with partial publication.

If at some point during your doctorate procedure you realise that a different form of dissertation seems more appropriate than the one you originally chose, you will be allowed to change the form accordingly.

The faculty’s Graduate School “Managing Diversity & Transition – Vielfalt & Wandel gestalten” offers its members an array of additional help in the form of consultations, scientific workshops, trainings, and financial support (e.g. scholarships or travel grants), designed to meet our members’ most pressing and common needs.

As a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Human Sciences, you will automatically become a member of the Graduate School (GS). There are two types of membership: “passive” and “active”.

For “passive members” there are no responsibilities.

The Graduate School can offer financial support only to “active” members. So, in order to benefit from the GS’ entire range of offers, members will need to meet certain criteria.

If you intend to apply for financial support, e.g. travel grants or funding for individual projects organised by the members themselves, you will need to prove that you have been actively contributing to the programme of the Graduate School (at least once a year); you can find examples of active participation/contribution that qualify applicants for funding and financial support in the respective announcements on the Graduate School’s website.

More information on the Graduate School, its membership scheme and its offers can be found here (Graduate School).

By submitting your dissertation, you effectively apply for admission to the doctorate procedure. The date of your viva will also be determined by when you hand in your thesis.

Dates and deadlines

All ongoing doctorate procedures will be grouped together and handled according to fixed deadlines every semester (phases). This means that the earliest possible date of your viva is determined by the deadline at which your application for admission to the doctorate procedure is received by the Doctoral Office.

You can find an overview of the current phases here.

Application

The complete application is outlined in §11 of the PhD regulations (PromO). In addition to a formal letter of application and the actual dissertation, further documents need to be handed in at the Doctoral Office. A checklist of required documents according to PromO from 18 December 2018 can be found in the right-hand column.

The complete doctoral application must be submitted as follows:

• In paper version with the original signatures together with a printed copy of the dissertation PER MAIL to the Doctoral Office
• as well as a digital version (electronic copies of the application documents) together with the dissertation in PDF format PER E-MAIL to Promotionen-HFuni-koeln.de.

Your application will first be processed electronically. The receipt of your electronic application will be decisive for meeting a certain deadline.
However, please make sure that the paper version of your application arrives at the Doctoral Office as soon as possible.

Please make sure that the electronic version is also complete. This means that the PDF version of the application for the doctoral procedure must contain all the documents listed in the checklist.

You will be allowed to make suggestions as to (a) who should be your experts and (b) when your oral examination should take place as well as (c) who should be your examiners. All people involved, e.g. your prospective examiners, need to agree to this and the proposed date(s) have to be in accordance with the respective phases as outlined in the dates section above. It is the Doctoral Committee, however, that finally decides upon your examiners and will summon them. The Committee also sets the date for your oral examination.

The Doctoral Office, the Faculty’s main doctoral administrative body, will notify you when your doctorate procedure commences. There will be no updates on the status of your procedure. You will receive written notification on important matters from the Doctoral Office in due course.

Assessment

The Doctoral Office will summon the experts’ reports on your dissertation. The deadline for these reports is six weeks (expected due date of reports).

When all reports have been gathered, members of the faculty who are authorised to award PhDs have two weeks to inspect both the dissertation and the experts’ reports.

Following this two-week period, you will be informed about whether your dissertation was accepted or rejected and about the mark of your written thesis. This letter will also include information on the date of your viva.

Once you have been informed that your dissertation has been accepted, your oral examination awaits. Oral examinations are usually open to all members of the faculty. You can, however, request the exclusion of the public from your oral examination when handing in your application for admission to the doctorate procedure.

Once your admission has been accepted and your doctorate procedure has been commenced, please make an appointment for the oral examination with your examination board (taking the deadlines into account). Please then forward the date, time and form of the examination (in person or online) to the Doctoral Office.

Oral examinations can be held either in person or online:

(a) In-person exam: If the examination takes place in-person, with the agreement of the examination board, the room reservation must be organized by the doctoral candidates themselves.

(b) Online: The online examination (“Zoom-Meeting”) is created by the chairperson of the examination board and the access data would be sent to all participants before the disputation.

Oral examination procedure:

The oral examination generally takes about 90 minutes. A maximum of 30 minutes should be allocated to your presentation; the remainder of the time is meant to be used for the discussion of your dissertation with the examining board. You will be asked to present and defend your findings and should be able to put the results of your research in a broader context. Please ask your supervisor with regard to the focus of your presentation.

Right after the completion of your presentation and the subsequent discussion/question session, the examination board will decide whether you have passed the examination and will agree on a grade. The examiners will then inform you of their decision.

After the oral examination:

Following the oral examination, your first certificate (“Zeugnis”) will be issued. You will receive your certificate by e-mail as well as a revision certificate and information on the publication of your dissertation.

After successfully passing the oral examination, your doctoral requirements will be fulfilled once you have published your dissertation. Only then will you receive your final certificate (“Urkunde”) and have the right to hold the doctoral degree.

Even though you have passed the oral examination, your doctorate procedure would only be successfully and finally concluded once your dissertation has been published. Only then, you will receive your Doctoral Degree Certificate (Urkunde) that will allow you to hold the doctoral degree.

Before you initiate the publication, please check with your examiners of your dissertation whether there are any revision requirements that have to be fulfilled before the final publication.

There are several different ways to make your dissertation publicly available. Please see the document Handout for Publishing your Dissertation:

You will receive your certificate (“Urkunde”) which allows you to hold the title PhD officially after you have handed in the required revision certificate and copies of your published dissertation.

Revision certificate:

You must submit the signed revision certificate (and if applicable the publishing contract and the respective confirmation of the number of copies) to the Doctoral Office of the Faculty of Human Sciences (an E-Mail would be sufficient). For further information follow the instructions for the publication of the dissertation.

Printed copies of the dissertation:

The printed deposit copies of the dissertation are to be submitted to the

Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln  
Abteilung Hochschulschriften, Tausch, Geschenk            
Universitätsstraße 33
50931 Cologne, Germany             
Room 4.002 (4th floor).

Telephone: (0221) 4703318 or 470-2573

Afterwards, an acknowledgment of receipt will be sent to the Doctoral Office automatically.

Every autumn, the Faculty of Human Sciences hosts a graduation ceremony to celebrate the achievements of all doctoral candidates who passed their viva and to bid farewell to them.

Invitations go out to all PhD students who have managed to pass their viva in the past year, regardless of whether or not their dissertation has been published yet. Friends and family, too, will be asked to share in the festivities.

We cannot wait to welcome you to the graduation ceremony!

The below photograph should give you an idea as to what you can expect: