The Faculty of Health, Aarhus University welcomes international candidates to apply for a PhD position at the faculty.
On this page we have gathered some information relevant to you as an international PhD applicant.
Before and when applying for a PhD, there are certain matters that you need to take into consideration. For instance it is a good idea to study the rules and regulations of PhD studies at Graduate School of Health. You can also read more about why you should do a PhD at Aarhus University.
The PhD education in Denmark corresponds to three years of full time studies. The PhD studies consist of a number of mandatory study elements that you need to complete before you can get your PhD degree.
The PhD studies consist of these mandatory study elements:
Find more information about rules and regulations of PhD studies at Graduate School of Health. You can also read more about doing a PhD at Aarhus University here.
Before you apply it is important that you read about our application requirements in our application guide. For instance, please be aware that you must have found a possible main supervisor at the Faculty of Health, at least one co-supervisor and have prepared a project description in English before you apply together with them. Also be aware that we have requirements to English language skills that must be documented at the time of enrolment at the latest.
Learn about our Graduate Programmes (GP), see our open calls and find information about the application process.
Enrolment to the Graduate Programmes requires that you have completed a Danish Bachelor’s or Master’s degree or similar relevant five-year degree programme.
If you have any other Danish or a foreign education, you can ask for an equivalence assessment before applying for enrolment to make sure that you are qualified.
Learn more about equivalence assessment.
Please note, that international one-year Master’s degrees are not equivalent to a Danish Master’s degree of 120 ECTS (two years full time).
For more information, please see the Ministry of Higher Education and Science’s general assessments for specific countries.
E.g. does the Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education assess a British Master’s degree of 180 credits/units as equivalent to 60 ECTS i.e. one year of a Danish Master’s degree.
If you have a Chinese Master’s degree, please remember to include your CDGDC report together with your Bachelor's degree and Master's degree diploma and transcripts of records (in Chinese and English) in order to get your degree assessed. The report can be in Chinese.
If you are not a Danish citizen, you are required to hold a PhD work and residence permit in order to be enrolled as a PhD student at Health, Aarhus University. The scope of the permits differs according to your citizenship (EU/EEA citizenship vs. Non EU/EEA citizenship).
Read more about the general conditions for international PhD students and permission to reside and work in Denmark (AU International Academic Staff Service website).
Please note that the process of obtaining a work and residence permit may take up to 2 months. You cannot be enrolled until the 1st of the month after you have obtained your permits.
You can only apply for a residence and work permit you to apply for enrolment and be offered admission. You need your letter of employment and enrolment.
Your application for the work and residence permit can only be started by the Graduate School of Health. Please contact us at graduateschoolhealth@au.dk in order to start the application process.
To complete the application process, you need your letter of employment and enrolment. Therefore, it is important that you accept the admission offer by filling in the confirmation form and uploading the financial statement as soon as possible.
PhD students enrolled at a university abroad can obtain a supplementary PhD degree from Health – a so called PhD double/joint degree. The option is worth considering if the PhD project already requires the PhD student to spend time in Aarhus collaborating with Health researchers.
Read more about joint/double PhD degree at our page Types of PhD.
