A joint project supported by the University of Bergamo and the University of Pavia, the PhD School in Language Sciences offers a highly specialized education program in theoretical and applied linguistics, as well as in linguistics of modern languages and their related philologies. Consistent with the different fields of research and teaching areas of its Faculty Members, the course is articulated into three curricula:

1. Historical, general and typological linguistics, and philological sciences
2. Applied, computational, and modern language linguistics
3. Sociolinguistics and pragmatics

Teaching board. They are mainly academics from the University of Bergamo and the University of Pavia; the board is completed by scholars belonging to other Italian and foreign universities.

Educational offer. It is characterized by a solid international, cross-disciplinary focus. It results in extended stays of PhD students at foreign universities highly specialised in the field of their doctoral research. In addition to attending courses and seminars, PhD students will carry out a research project. They will eventually write a doctoral dissertation supervised by an academic from either the University of Bergamo or the University of Pavia and with the support of other Members of the Teaching board.

Duration. The program lasts three years.

Grants. Seven scholarships are issued yearly; one grant is funded by the Department of Languages, Literatures and Foreign Cultures of the University of Bergamo within the departmental project Dipartimento di Eccellenza. In this case, the PhD project must be related to either digital humanities or translation studies.  

Admission. PhD Candidates are requested to submit their CV, publications (if any) and a research project pertaining to an aspect of the PhD program in Language Sciences. Candidates must have a solid knowledge of English and good knowledge of another foreign language (CEFR, at least a B2 level or above).

Career opportunities. PhD graduates can undertake an academic career (in such a case a doctoral degree is mandatory); either on a national and international level, they can carry out philological and linguistic research in institutions, establishments and foundations or they can work as linguistic and cultural mediators in different organizations. PhD graduates can also access various professional fields due to their high expertise in textual criticism, and in speech and information technologies (with specific reference to corpora quantitative research, to the preparation of annotated corpora at various levels, and to the processing and development of linguistic databases). PhD graduates can find employment in publishing houses, editorial offices, cultural centres, libraries.