Enroll at Graduate School

Once you are registered at Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, the Graduate School will contact you to arrange facilities. You will receive an administration number, a Tilburg University e-mail address, and a library account. The Graduate School will then contact you about the enrollment procedure on your Tilburg University e-mail account.

At the end of the PhD program, more specifically at the approval of the PhD committee, external PhD candidates can submit to the Graduate School a motivated request for making available funds to a maximum of € 500. These funds cover expenses such as: attending conferences, poster presentations, taking (a) specific course(s), or other research related costs.

In order to get access to Hora Finita, you need to have the login information from Tilburg University that you will have received from the Graduate School. In Hora Finita, you need to register among other things your personal details, supervisor(s), and previous education. The Graduate School will contact the PhD candidate if more information about the registration in Hora Finita is required. The Director of the Graduate School assesses the request for admission to the PhD program before referring it to the Doctorate Board.

Read the manual for Hora Finata.

An important part of your registration as a PhD candidate is to upload your Training and Supervision Plan (TSP) in Hora Finita. This is a tool that you can use to discuss and improve your performance during your PhD. It may also be used to set clear expectations and make satisfying agreements with your supervisor(s) about the needed training and supervision during the PhD program.

The TSP needs to be discussed during meetings with your PhD supervisor and the Graduate School. It must be updated and uploaded yearly in Hora Finita.

PhD candidates who do not have an employment contract are required to upload their TSP within a year after the start of the PhD program.

All external PhD candidates are “admitted under conditions” during the first year of their PhD project. This period enables the prospective candidates to prepare their research project and make all the necessary arrangements that are required to formally start the PhD trajectory, such as drafting a (concise) research plan, rough yearly planning, and having the research plan assessed by the Research Ethics and Data Management Committee (REDC) (if applicable).

After ten months, external PhD candidates and their supervisors will evaluate the progress of the project and both can then either decide to start the formal enrollment procedure for the candidate in the Graduate School, or to discontinue the project. Should the outcome of this meeting be positive, then the PhD candidate has to deliver the following documents to the Graduate School:

• CV of PhD candidate.
• A concise research plan (to assess the quality and feasibility of the proposed PhD project).
• An annual planning (including the number of hours per week the PhD candidate will spend on the PhD project) to check whether the project can be completed within the maximum period of eight years.
• Proof of submission to the REDC for ethical clearance, if applicable.
• A short explanation of the connection between the content of the research proposal with one of the existing research programs of TSHD, to assess the degree of embeddedness in the department to which the primary supervisor belongs.
• For PhD candidates started after July 2023 we will also need: a short reflection on what kind of courses or PhD training may be needed to improve the skills necessary to complete the PhD program successfully within 8 years. You can use the Training and Supervision Plan to help with writing this reflection.

Based on suggestions made by the supervisors, the Graduate School will approach two independent researchers who will assess the documents. Should their assessment be negative, the Graduate School will coordinate the administrative termination of the PhD project. If the researchers are positive, the PhD candidate will be officially admitted to the Graduate School.