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How to Get a PhD Position in Sweden

…especially as an international

Annika Wappelhorst
The Expat Chronicles
9 min readDec 3, 2023

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Photo of Jönköping, Sweden by author

So, you’re on the academic job hunt? In this blog post, I will share my experience and tips as an international PhD student in Sweden who started their position a few months ago. This post is not all-encompassing, but I hope it helps somebody on the path of becoming a ‘doktorand’.

Compared to other European countries, being a doctoral candidate in Sweden can be quite luxurious, with paid sick and parental leave, a full-time salary for four to five years, openness towards foreigners and many publications in English. Not every position is like that, but the majority is to my knowledge. Here is my advice for getting admitted. Note that I have the most exposure to social sciences, although I try to include other perspectives and will continuously update this post as I learn more.

Table of Contents

  1. Preconditions for becoming a PhD student
  2. Before applying
  3. Where to find positions
  4. How to apply
  5. My journey

Preconditions for Becoming a PhD Student

Although I call those preconditions, these are just major advantages based on my observation, so fulfilling many of them should increase your chances.

  • Knowing people at a university — and having people know you — makes it much easier to get a position. I believe this holds for academia around the world.
  • If the job posting asks you for any level of Swedish, your application will likely be filtered out without Swedish skills on your CV. This requirement, however, depends on the discipline, department and institution. My PhD friends in engineering and economics at Jönköping University needed no Swedish skills whatsoever— the same goes for different disciplines at Stockholm University. I, on the other hand, have many colleagues in Swedish-language programs and some mandatory meetings are held in Swedish, which is why my conversational level was a real asset. Sign up for free Swedish courses (SFI) or use the resources I talked about in another post!
  • I recommend collecting so-called ‘academic merits’ during or after your master’s program. Good grades are non-neglectable, but what can make you stand out are publications, conference presentations and/or teaching experience. With the guidance of a teacher from my master’s program, I applied to academic conferences and presented results from my master’s thesis there. The smaller and more ‘niche’ the conference, the easier it will be to get in, and if you’re lucky, there will not even be a conference fee.
  • You’re less likely to be accepted if you’ve never lived in Sweden. Most doctoral students I know are either Swedish or have done their master’s program in Sweden. However, I’ve recently met PhD students who never lived in Sweden before: an Indian in engineering, a German in media and communication science and an Azerbaijani in Islamic Studies. They seem to have stood out by several years of relevant work experience or ‘academic merits’. (Also, Swedish was no requirement for them.)
  • A PhD friend in Sweden told me that applying before having your master’s degree is pointless, as you will be filtered out based on missing formal requirements. You may want to verify this instead of believing me — or simply start applying once you’ve graduated and your intense master thesis period is over.

Before Applying

Try to gain university teaching experience. In Sweden, you can talk to one of your teachers about whom to approach. In my case, it was the head of department, who was surprisingly open to having me as a master’s student (and then master’s graduate) assist in teaching in an ‘adjunkt’ position. It can be scary to teach on your own for the first time, but I felt more confident with every completed lecture and seminar session.

Framing is key in your application. A fellow PhD student taught language courses in her mother tongue after completing her master’s in Sweden, which she emphasized to get a PhD position in education. You can also stress volunteering experiences or side jobs during your studies when they seem relevant to the PhD position. An application is a sales pitch of yourself, whether you like it or not.

Are you worried about your age, nationality, language level or other characteristics? Try to frame them as advantages instead. You’re in your early twenties and are afraid that’s too young? It can be a strength when teaching students who are close to you in age and life experience since you can relate to them more easily. You’re already older and have a family? This life experience shows you can juggle different tasks, which is expected from every PhD student — and your previous work experience can be a valuable add-on to your research and teaching.

Get in touch with the contact person for a PhD position before applying. (In Sweden as a country with low hierarchies, you can address everybody with their first name.) This adds a personal note and will make the person more likely to remember you when reading your application. If you find a phone number, you can call and otherwise write an email. I once had a 45-minute long phone call with a professor at a German university who was curious about my background and took a lot of time to answer my questions. Although I was rejected from the position, this same professor remembered me almost one year later and sent me a private email with a link to a new position in her department!

If you’re already doing your master’s at a Swedish university, make your teachers understand that you’re passionate about pursuing academia. It may feel cringey, but remember how important connections are. Even after your graduation, your former teachers may still do you the favor of sending you interesting positions. I might have been lucky, but that was at least what happened to me. Kindly asking your teachers for recommendation letters can also not hurt.

Dare to apply across disciplines

Remember I just talked about my PhD friend who now works in educational science although that is not what she studied? I also have a PhD colleague who has not studied media and communications at all. There are good chances that a person who studied sociology might get into media and communication science or somebody who graduated from psychology into educational science (just examples).

If you have a sociology background, spread your wings to other fields. Almost all sociology students I know want to stay in academia, so competition is fierce. This makes sense as sociology doesn’t have a clear-cut professional direction — unlike medicine or entrepreneurship. In engineering, on the other hand, I was told universities have a hard time finding PhD students because graduates can earn a lot more in any job outside academia.

Where to Find Positions

Useful Platforms

Make use of your LinkedIn profile or create one. Although it’s much more relevant for jobs outside academia, I found many interesting academic positions on LinkedIn. It can also help to connect with scholars, as they might post about new PhD positions, but generally speaking, it is not their favorite platform. Facebook or Twitter/X may be more promising. Although I don’t have Twitter anymore, I had a job interview for a PhD position just because a German professor tweeted about the opening and I sent her a private message! Another go-to website is Academic Positions.

Associations

To hear about relevant positions, subscribe to the newsletters of relevant academic associations in your field. They are usually called something like ‘International [your discipline] association’. In media and communication science (‘MKV’ in Swedish), you should follow the ComList, the newsletters of ICA and IAMCR, and national associations, such as FSMK for Sweden.

Swedish Universities

You should get the newsletters of as many Swedish universities as possible to hear about the newest positions. Sometimes, you can filter the field and the level, e.g. PhD or postdoc, but sometimes you will get all and need to skim through them yourself. Here is a non-exhaustive list of current links where you can usually subscribe to these newsletters. I was told to follow the English and Swedish versions, as they don’t always overlap.

How to Apply

Unlike other countries I know about, most universities in Sweden ask you to submit a research proposal for your PhD project. It consists of several pages including research questions, background, methods, a timeline and theories. This is preliminary — it needs to sound solid with good use of references, but from what I’ve heard, almost no PhD student will end up writing exactly the dissertation they sought to do. It’s natural to deviate from your original plan for a variety of reasons, and I think it’s comforting that the research proposal is not set in stone.

I believe applying to academic positions takes much more time than applying to any jobs on ‘the free market’. Keeping in mind that departments/research environments are often very specialized, you will want to make an effort to frame your theses and previous experience inside and outside academia as relevant to that research group. It’s unlikely that you can send the same application to two different universities.

As an example, I sent 16 applications and was invited to 6 interviews — but some friends were already offered one or several positions after a few carefully crafted applications. Others got job offers from their professors as master’s students or graduates. Sometimes, this is how a position gets filled internally but still needs to be advertised, so that people apply with no chance of getting in. Even if it takes you 20 applications, don’t despair.

My Journey

For almost a year, I applied to PhD and research positions, starting a few months before graduating with my master’s program— and then while working and studying for a second master’s in sociology. The positions were mainly in my home country of Germany, followed by Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden.

I only applied to one position in Sweden and got accepted, but I need to mention that this was at the university where I had completed my graduate studies, taught in four different courses, and people from the department and recruitment committee had been my teachers and/or colleagues. During the job search, having PhD friends helped a lot to stay confident and motivated, and to learn from other people’s ‘mistakes’.

What I heard from most acquaintances and friends in Germany and Sweden is that having studied at a certain department/faculty is the biggest predictor of being accepted for a position there. As frustrating as this is when applying, it is understandable: People want to employ a PhD student or research assistant who is reliable, aligns with their ideas about research, will be hard-working and can teach future students — which a person definitely can when they’ve been a student at the same university and have incorporated the logic of that institution.

Another observation I made in the social sciences: Many people who are passionate about academia and unable to start a PhD right away start a second master’s program (myself included). The sad part about this is that it may reinforce already existing inequalities, meaning that people who can afford to continue studying instead of getting a full-time job after their master’s degree will have better chances of entering a PhD program. It may also lead to over-qualification, and might eventually mean that every PhD student needs to have two master’s degrees. However, don’t give up hope. Getting a PhD position seems to be a combination of hard work, privilege and luck.

But hey, you don’t need ten job offers, just one.

And maybe that means dealing with plenty of emails reading ‘Dear applicant, unfortunately…’ first.

© Annika Wappelhorst 2023

If you learned something and would like to give a small donation, you can do so here: https://ko-fi.com/annikawa I also wrote the following blog posts, so feel free to check them out:

Why So Many Foreigners Love Studying in Sweden

How Did Flight Shame Become a Societal Issue in Germany and Sweden?

PhD
Phd Student
Research
University
Sweden

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Annika Wappelhorst
The Expat Chronicles

Written by Annika Wappelhorst

2.7K Followers
Writer for

I write about life in Sweden and other countries, language learning, doing yoga and conducting media & communication research.

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