FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

The doctorat.gouv.fr platform is optimised for use on a desktop computer and in "day" mode or "light" theme (as opposed to "night" mode or "dark" theme). Further optimisation work on visuals for "night" mode remains to be carried out.

The "website" section is adapted for use across various devices (desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones). However, the listings application app.doctorat.gouv.fr is not optimised for mobile use.

The definition of the thesis topic is a multi-step process. A supervision offer facilitates connections at an early stage of this process.

Through a supervision offer, researchers indicate that they are interested in supervising doctoral candidates on doctoral projects covering specific themes or research questions.

This type of offer is aimed at:

• Students in disciplines where it is customary for the thesis topic to be proposed by the candidate themselves,
• Working professionals who have questions arising from their field of activity, linked to their experience, and who may (for those with an R&D role) seek to align their thesis topic with their work and research they have already carried out,
• Companies, public bodies, and other organisations seeking experts with whom to build a doctoral project in partnership,
• Potentially, researchers from other disciplines seeking contacts for interdisciplinary research projects.

The supervision offers published on the dedicated doctorat.gouv.fr application are submitted on the initiative of the researchers who propose them.

They are submitted via doctoral schools.

1) Doctoral schools: thesis topic offers posted on doctorat.gouv.fr include a "funding" section.

It is quite common for several funding options to be explored for a single thesis topic. In such cases, the funding arrangements being explored are not necessarily specified.

Doctoral schools verify that offers originate from their affiliated laboratories and from the researchers attached to them who are qualified to supervise theses. In some cases, the content of the offer may be subject to prior review by the laboratory and/or the doctoral school.

2) Labelled employers: PhD funding offers may be posted by employers who have been awarded the "Doctorat : Employeur engagé" (PhD-committed employer) label.

3) Doctoral programme coordinators: doctoral programme coordinators may post information, announcements, or calls related to their programmes on doctorat.gouv.fr. A doctoral programme must include a minimum of 3 doctoral funding positions per year.

The website provides information on the various funding options and available support schemes in order to guide stakeholders towards the best options, on the following pages:

• Thesis funding: an overview
• Doctoral research: framework, partnerships and funding

Yes, it is planned. However, before beginning the translation, we first wish to gather and take into account your feedback on the French-language pages in order to improve them in terms of content, navigation between pages, and usability.

Absolutely! Our website is designed to be enriched on a regular basis. We first prioritised overall coherence and the essential pages, in particular those addressing the most frequently asked questions during the doctoral project development phase ahead of the forthcoming academic year.

Doctoral ambassadors are identified through universities, which forward their nominations to their regional academic delegations for research and innovation (DRARI). Drawing on all of these nominations, the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Space then ensures that, both at the level of each region and nationally, the career paths represented are sufficiently diverse and representative (men and women, international backgrounds, careers across all sectors in which doctoral graduates work).
A call for nominations via the DRARIs, addressed to universities and institutions awarding doctoral degrees, will be relaunched around the month of April.

The definition of a thesis topic is a multi-step process. You have several options for finding a thesis supervisor to guide you in developing your thesis topic and preparing your doctorate:
- Through supervision offers, researchers indicate that they are available to supervise doctoral candidates on specific themes or research questions.
- If you cannot find a supervision offer suited to your thesis topic on the (Opens a new window) platform, you can also identify researchers to supervise you by using the platform to find thesis topics close to the subject you wish to pursue and get in touch with them.

Not yet!

In the "beta" version of the doctorat.gouv.fr listings application, the only offers published are those that have been submitted to the platform via the API of the Adum doctoral school management system.

This system is used by the vast majority of doctoral schools in France (the files of 80% of doctoral candidates enrolled in their first year are managed via Adum), but several other systems also exist. "Recently, a connection with the Amethys system has also been established, enabling thesis topics to be collected from doctoral schools using Amethys.

Developments are currently under way to integrate offers from doctoral schools that do not use Adum, so that they too may submit offers via API.