Programmes

Doctorate

The Faculty of Translation and Interpreting has a PhD programme with the following specialization:

  • Translation Studies
  • Multilingual Information Processing
  • Interpreting Studies
  • Multilingual Communication Management

Admission requirements

General requirements

You must hold either a Master of Arts in Translation or Master of Arts in Conference Interpreting from the University of Geneva’s Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, or another degree deemed to be equivalent or relevant to the specialization and topic being proposed for the PhD.

1st step - Preliminary proposal

Before putting together your official application, you must send your CV along with a 1-3 page preliminary proposal to the academic advisor. In the proposal, you should identify your specialization and briefly describe your research objective. This will help the professors in the Faculty decide if they are interested in working with you. You can write your thesis in any of the A languages offered by the FTI (German, English, Arabic, Spanish, French or Italian).

2nd step - Application

Conditional admission

If you are granted conditional admission to the PhD programme, you must satisfy the following requirements:

  1. Submit an application with a preliminary proposal that has been accepted by an FTI professor; do NOT submit a detailed thesis proposal.
  2. In your letter of motivation, you must commit to submitting a detailed thesis proposal for final admission, no later than one year after conditional admission (see “Study regulations”)

Unconditional admission

You may be granted unconditional admission if you submit an application with a detailed thesis proposal.

Application

You must send the following documents to the academic advisor:

  • detailed PhD thesis proposal (see “Thesis proposal guidelines”)
  • letter of motivation addressed to the FTI’s College of Professors
  • formal agreement from a professor in the Faculty to direct your thesis
  • PhD programme put forward by your intended thesis director, with your approval
  • detailed CV in French (dated and signed)
  • certified copy of the highest degree you hold (1)
  • completed form requesting equivalence for the highest degree you hold, if applicable
  • simple copies of all other degrees (1)
  • copy of your transcript (1)
  • publication record, if applicable
(1) Degrees that are not in French, German, English, Italian or French must be accompanied by a translation.

 

3rd step - Decision

Your application for conditional or unconditional admission will be passed on to the Office of the Dean, which will then submit it for approval to the Faculty’s College of Professors.

Once you have received a letter of admission, you must follow the registration procedure.

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Deadlines

PhD applicants are not subject to the University’s registration deadlines and should send their application directly to the FTI's academic advisor.

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Doctoral Training Programme

All PhD students at the FTI are required to enrol in a programme that addresses methodological and strategical issues related to doctoral research (Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies, ReMeTIS), which is based on collaborative learning and peer tutoring.

Through our virtual learning platform, the FTI's internal PhD students meet the external PhD students enrolled on the programme and together they follow an introduction to 21st century research methods in the field of translation and interpreting. The aim of the programme is to accompany PhD students, particularly those at the beginning of their PhD, and to help them become full-fledged members of the scientific community. ReMeTIS offers a complete introduction to a variety of research methods, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods as well as corpus-based research in translation and interpreting. Furthermore, the programme's targeted modules have been designed to support future researchers in formulating research questions, creating poster presentations for academic conferences, and developing publication and networking strategies. The modules cover the skills that students are expected to have at the end of their PhD, as described in the Swiss and European qualifications frameworks (Dublin Descriptors) and in an APEC-Deloitte study on researchers in the 21st century.

PhD students who are enrolled at the FTI can participate in this programme for free. For more information on the programme and entry requirements for internal FTI students and external researchers, see Research Methods in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

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Documents to download

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Contacts

For further information, please contact the academic advisor.

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