22 PhD programmes offered by the university

The aim of the Education research programme at the University of Amsterdam is to understand how education contributes to the development of cognitive and social-emotional skills and to design and test methods that enhance this development. Both normal and abnormal development are studied.

The Amsterdam School of Historical Studies at the University of Amsterdam integrates a variety of (inter)disciplinary perspectives, including history, history of art, literature and religious studies. 

The Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research is dedicated to providing supervision and support to post-graduate students pursuing a PhD in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. It offers this degree programme in Political Science.

The Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research is dedicated to providing supervision and support to post-graduate students pursuing a PhD in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. It offers this degree programme in Sociology.

The aim of the Experimental and Political Economics programme at the University of Amsterdam is improving the understanding of the behavioural determinants and consequences of economic decision making by focusing on political economic issues, allowing for bounded rationality, and using laboratory experimentation as a research method.

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) PhD programme at the University of Amsterdam is designed to support and guide PhD candidates in their track to become highly qualified scientific researchers in the areas described by the institute's research mission.

The Actuarial Science and Mathematical Finance programme is a research programme in the section Quantitative Economics of the Amsterdam School of Economics at the University of Amsterdam. It concerns both fundamental and applied research in the field of financial and economic risk management.

Macro and International Economics at the University of Amsterdam is one of the research groups of the Amsterdam School of Economics Research Institute. It focuses on applied and theoretical research within the areas of macroeconomics and international economics.

The University of Amsterdam Econometrics research programme aims at improving the accuracy, efficiency and robustness of econometric methods.

The Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research is dedicated to providing supervision and support to post-graduate students pursuing a PhD in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. It offers this degree programme in Geography, Planning and International Development Studies.

The Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research is dedicated to providing supervision and support to post-graduate students pursuing a PhD in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. It offers this degree programme in Anthropology.

The objective of the Equilibrium, Expectations and Dynamics programme at the University of Amsterdam is the development of (mathematical) economic theory, focusing on the understanding of economic processes.

The vision of the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication at the University of Amsterdam is to solve scientific and societal problems in the broad field of language and communication through a focus on variability in language and the causes and constraints thereon.

The Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies was created with the goal of pooling and developing further existing research expertise in transnational and regional studies within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam.

At the Amsterdam Law School, top-level researchers collaborate in (inter)national, mostly socially engaged projects. The research at the University of Amsterdam covers themes in areas such as sustainability, health, labor, digitalization and crime.

The research programme Markets and Organizations (M&O) within the Amsterdam School of Economics at the University of Amsterdam joins researchers interested in studying the effective functioning of markets and organisations.

There are about 150 researchers working on their Dentistry PhD research at ACTA at the University of Amsterdam. PhD-students at ACTA can be employees or guest researchers.

Life in contemporary Western societies heavily depends on media and communication technologies. How we work and how we spend our spare time; what we do as citizens and as consumers; how we relate to others and to ourselves – all of this is now heavily pervaded by new media and communication technologies. This Communication Research programme is offered at the University of Amsterdam.

Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam particularly excels on national and international levels in five interdisciplinary research areas (‘themes’) that connect the fields of heritage, memory studies and material culture.

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis is a research institute and doctoral school at the University of Amsterdam dedicated to the critical and innovative study of culture from a broadly interdisciplinary perspective grounded in the humanities but increasingly extending to non-humanities fields.