Programme Overview

Our Ph.D. in Literary Linguistic and Historical Studies (henceforth DoLLS), available at the Department of Humanities (Dipsum), is an interdisciplinary postgraduate research degree which aims to provide a thorough knowledge of international literature, linguistics as well as modern and contemporary history from European and global perspectives. Thanks to these goals, DoLLS offers research methods and tools which can be applied to the several research fields included in our programme.

You will attend training modules and seminars, which are scheduled on a six-monthly basis. These activities will cover political and institutional issues as well as cultural, linguistic and multimedia systems intended to define methodologies and narrative tools, learning and writing skills, which will be of benefit to future careers, whether in publishing, cultural industry or advanced research centres.

DoLLS’ interdisciplinary approach fosters the connection between literature, linguistics and historiography by highlighting their being complementary to one another. From this perspective, DoLLS is organised into four study programmes: literary studies, linguistic studies, historical studies, international studies. This allows our Ph.D. students to be equipped with strong discipline-specific education, while sharing wide generic and practical knowledge. Our Ph.D. candidates are therefore strongly encouraged to gain highly specialised skills in their research field, in addition to learning about different heuristic and educational dimensions, which is key to sound education in humanities.

With this purpose, we foster active participation in international research groups as well as other study experiences elsewhere in Italy and abroad. In doing so, our Ph.D. candidates are encouraged to improve their original and critical thought, data gathering and management, research methods and scientific texts drafting.

In order to provide Ph.D. candidates with a complete training, you are required to gain adequate language skills attending courses at our University Language Centre, which offers a wide range of language classes, as well as spending some time studying abroad in foreign universities and/or research centres.

Careers and Employability

Our Ph.D. programme DoLLS provides employment and career opportunities in higher education, public and private (national and international) research centres, collaborations on projects promoted by private and public foundations, jobs in companies working in several different fields, language-related work environments, communication and human resources management, teaching, and product and content editing for digital businesses. Our candidates may pursue a career as:

• Professionals and consultants in the fields of international relations and language integration policies at European level;
• Experts and consultants in publishing and journalism;
• Specialists in intercultural mediation and language teachers;
• Experts and consultants in IT, spoken and written language database management, public and private administration;
• Professional translators;
• Lexicographers for publishing houses specialising in dictionaries and online language resources;
• Educators in state and private schools;
• Professionals and consultants in content editing in the field of history for digital businesses, museums, archives, publishing houses;
• Experts in scientific research and higher education.Candidates will be monitored regularly to check their progress in research and writing until their final thesis is completed and submitted to the Ph.D. Board for the viva. Taking part in conferences, as well as publishing research-related articles, are significant elements of the programme. Moreover, Ph.D. holders will be supported after their viva and graduation, thanks to grants and funding, research fellowships, and contracts, also abroad.