In order to become a Research Year student, the student must apply and be approved for enrolment at the Graduate School of Health.

Before applying for enrolment, the student needs to find a main supervisor, a research project and secure funding for the project.

Calls for application for enrolment and/or scholarship are announced twice a year; the deadlines are mid-May and mid-November.

The open call provides an online application form, which must be completed by the student, in cooperation with the main supervisor.

Before filling in the online application, please ensure to read how to apply. All relevant information and templates can be found on the webpage.

The call opens approximately one month before deadline.

During the application process, the Graduate School of Health informs Health Studies Administration and AU Student Administration and Services about who has applied for a Research Year, and who is accepted.

There must be one main supervisor affiliated with the Research Year project, and preferably one or two co-supervisors.

Main supervisors must be employed at Faculty of Health at Aarhus University (minimum at assistant professor level or clinical associate professor level). Co-supervisors must have a Master’s degree or higher, e.g. be a PhD student (except integrated PhD students on part A).

Only a limited number of applicants can be enrolled in each application round.

A maximum of two applicants from each main supervisor can be approved in each application round.

It is required that a Research Year starts either 1 September or 1 February, and thereby follows the ordinary semesters at Aarhus University. Therefore, other starting dates are not possible.

Furthermore, it is required that the student applies for special leave during the enrolment period, to ensure that the student’s education is not influenced by the Study Progress Reform.

In order to be enrolled in the Research Year, the Research Year student must submit a copy of his or her permission to take special leave to the Graduate School of Health.

An approval of the project is only valid in the current application round, so it is not possible for Research Year students to postpone their starting date beyond the earliest possible starting date. Meaning, applicants offered a research year in the May application round must start on the firstcoming 1 September. And applicants in the November application round must start on the firstcoming 1 February.

 As of 2025 a financial statement must be included in the application, since applicants can only be enrolled for a Research Year if they have secured funding by the time of application.

When applying for enrolment and/or scholarship, the student has to choose the relevant Graduate Programme (GP); the GP that represents the department at Aarhus University where the main supervisor is employed.

Applications are assessed by the Head of GP according to the review process.

Only a limited number of students can be enrolled as Research Year students, and therefore applicants who are qualified may be rejected even if they have funding.

The Heads of Graduate Programme will jointly decide the final ranking if two or more applicants with the same weighted grade average occupy the cut-off for available places.

The student must unregister his/her SU while on special leave. When the special leave is registered in STADS, the SU system will be notified.

It is the student’s own responsibility to make sure that the SU system has the correct dates and that the SU system has unregistered the student while on special leave.

Funding is a requirement for enrolment, and the student needs to have adequate funding for a personal scholarship (at least 12 x 10,000 DKK and maximum 2 x SU grants for students not living with their parents).

A Research Year can be funded by private or public funds. As of 2025, the Graduate School of Health no longer administers scholarships from AUFF.

Therefore, a financial statement signed by the main supervisor and the department must be submitted along with the application, in order for the application to be accepted.

Scholarships paid out by an account at Aarhus University will be transferred directly to the student’s ”NEM-konto”.

The university is obliged to obtain statements of no previous convictions in respect of children for research year students paid by Aarhus University whose work involve direct contact with children under 15. You can read more about it here.

To obtain a statement of no previous convictions, you will need to give your consent via a form you submit to the police – you will receive an e-mail from the graduate school concerning this.

The police send the statement to the university in its role as disburser of the scholarship. The statement itself will be permanently deleted, but a brief note will be filed on your case.

Please be aware that you will not be enrolled and get your scholarship paid out before we have a statement of no previous convictions.

The Graduate School of Health must be informed about all long-term absence during a Research Year. 

Leave due to long-term sickness or maternity/paternity does not automatically extend the enrolment as a Research Year student.

But it is possible to apply for splitting the Research Year in two parts and taking a break from it for a period. Approval of such an application is based on an individual assessment and is dependent on all the following conditions being met:

• The break must be due to special circumstances that independently of the student’s own free will prevents him/her from completing the Research Year as planned, e.g. sickness, maternity/paternity leave, disability, child’s serious illness or death in the closest family. It can also be externally imposed conditions that render work on the project impossible for a while, e.g. dead mice, but it cannot be things like new or changed plans, busyness or study fatigue.

• There must be a timeline for the break, including a return date, that takes into account that the break cannot last more than 12 months, that the research year cannot last more than 12 months in total, and that the two parts still have to coincide with the regular semesters so that the student’s education is not unnecessarily delayed (both beginning and completing special leave in the middle of a semester will cause the semester to be 'locked' and the student cannot enrol for courses or take an exam in this period).

• The break must be approved by the main supervisor and co-supervisor(s), if any.

• There must be documentation for funding of the research year after the break.

• It is the Research Year student’s own responsibility to find out what the consequences will be with regard to active enrolment requirement, registration for courses, SU, etc.

If the Research Year is delayed due to long-term illness or maternity/paternity leave, and the abovementioned conditions cannot be fulfilled, the student has the following options:

• Resume the education as planned, completing the Research Year concurrently and thereby being both fulltime student and a fulltime Research Year student at the same time. During this, the student cannot receive scholarship, but can get SU while actively studying.

• Abort the Research Year and resume the education.

• Complete the Research Year based upon the results obtained.

In the event of sickness or maternity/paternity leave, the student may have to cancel the special leave in order to obtain the right to receive SU during the absence.

Please notice that giving birth while on special leave may lead to the annulment of the extra SU grants. For more information, please contact the SU Office at AU.

In case of long-term absence, please contact the Graduate School of Health and Health Studies Administration in order to find the best possible solution.

After the student has completed the 12 months of research, the main supervisor must submit a notification of completion to the Graduate School of Health in which he or she states whether or not the Research Year has been completed satisfactorily. The student and the main supervisor decide how the Research Year will be completed, e.g. with an article, presentation, etc. The outcome should be agreed upon at the time of application.

In connection with completion of their Research Year, students have the option to write their Master’s thesis based on their research. However, students must be aware that the Master’s thesis is an exam assignment and therefore must fulfil the requirement for individualisation. Therefore, data and other material published during the Research Year can only be included in the Master’s thesis with proper use of references – as is also the case with all other published material included by the students. Furthermore, (elements from) discussions of method and data that are drawn up in collaboration with the research group cannot be used as they are not drawn up independently by the student. The Master’s thesis can be used as a draft for publication after it has been submitted for assessment – also before the assessment is received.

For further information, please consult your study portal or contact HE Studies Administration.

A maximum of 15 ECTS for PhD courses completed during the research year and within the last 5 years before enrolment in the PhD programme can be transferred and approved as part of a future PhD degree. However, please notice that if you have had PhD courses transferred to your Master's degree programme, you cannot also get them transferred to your PhD degree programme.

Students, who after a Research Year becomes a PhD student, can also apply for up to 6 months credit transfer, and thereby shorten the enrolment for the PhD study to 2,5 years.

In the case of insurance, Research Year students are compared to actively enrolled students at AU. It is therefore recommended that you as a Research Year student take out a full-time accident and liability insurance (heltidsdækkende ulykkes- og ansvarsforsikring).

Please consult AU’s staff pages for information about insurance.

A Research Year is a fulltime activity, and it is therefore strongly recommended that the student does not have other work at the same time.