The Institute of Development Policy and Management (IOB ) offers a multi-disciplinary Doctoral Programme, leading to a PhD in Development Studies administered by IOB and granted by the University of Antwerp. It in addition cooperates with the Faculty of Applied Economic Sciences (FAES) and the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences (FPSC) at the university of Antwerp to offer disciplinary PhD programmes in the field of development.
The IOB PhD programme is related to the research agenda of IOB. Inevitably, IOB can only offer high quality guidance to a limited number of PhD-students and therefore adheres to a strict policy in considering and accepting applications.
Many PhD students have institutional links with IOB (e.g. as an alumnus of an IOB Master programme or as a researcher from a partner institute, or as a collaborator of a development agency that has commissioned research from IOB), and are invited to join the research team on this basis. IOB will however also consider applications from other candidates provided they have already secured the (self)finance for their PhD and provided they convince us that their research project fits with the research agenda of a senior staff member of IOB. From this it follows that spontaneous applications from students without previous relation to the IOB and without funding and the approval of an IOB supervisor for their PhD project will not be considered.