First steps: supervisors and the prospective doctoral thesis project

First of all, check with the Office for Academic Affairs whether you meet the prerequisites for admission.

After official admission, you can apply for the First Defence. 

In order to be able to do the First Defence and submit the documentation for the First Defence, you need to find two supervisors who are willing to support you which might take some time.  Any staff member of the University of Graz holding a postdoctoral lecture qualification ("Habilitation") in the intended dissertation subject can supervise the thesis as First Supervisor. Contact the departments at our faculty in order to contact professors who might become your supervisors. The Second Supervisor does not have to be a staff member of the University of Graz, but has to be a person holding a postdoctoral lecture qualification. After having agreed with the supervisors on a topic and working title for the doctoral thesis, the supervisors and the student have to verify whether the topic has been already assigned to someone else ("Themenabfrage"). 

Please note: You also have to determine a dissertation subject and a specialisation subject. The topic of your doctoral thesis has to be in the field of the dissertation subject and your First Supervisor needs to hold a postdoctoral lecture qualification for that subject. The specialisation subject does not have to be related neither to the topic of your doctoral thesis nor the postdoctoral lecture qualification of your Second Supervisor. However, the courses you need to pass have to be assigend to the subjects chosen and in English. The courses you intend to do have to be listed on the application form for the First Defence.