Doctoral Programme

We take an interdisciplinary approach, continuously exploring the interconnections between economics, political science and law and how such linkages can be developed to enhance scientific theory and practice. In fact, this programme is targeted at doctoral students who are interested in writing theses that cross the boundaries among the three disciplines.

When you enter the WTI, you become part of a unique community of scholars, thought leaders and policy shapers. You join a group of people from around the world who are making a difference. The doctoral programme is structured in such a way as to encourage you to contribute to the overall experience and to help make it a success not only for yourself, but also for your colleagues.

PhD courses at the WTI are aimed at providing PhD students, young postdocs and practitioners with an opportunity to update their training in fields within the range of expertise of the WTI.

At least two one-week summer courses are taught each year, in August and September.

Courses are taught in English, and limited to a maximum enrollment of 35. To derive maximum benefit, we recommend that during the week of the course participants devote themselves exclusively to course work.

For details of courses in the current year as well as past courses, see the section below.

For Economics PhD students:

• Information about the Faculty of Economics at the University of Bern
• Guidelines for PhD students in the Department of Economics
• Regulations on Doctoral Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences

For Law PhD students: 

• Regulations on Doctoral Studies at the Faculty of Law

2022

26 - 30 September 2022
Law & Economics of International Law with a specific focus on Trade and Investment
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof. Anne van Aaken is an Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Law and Economics, Legal Theory, Public International Law and European Law and Director of the Institute of Law and Economics, University of Hamburg. More information can be found in the flyer.

2021

6 - 10 December 2021
Trade Negotiations & Techniques
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Maarten Smeets (PhD), Associate Professor at St Petersburg State University and the Shanghai University of International Business and Economics (SUIBE), Senior Associate at the Clingendael Academy (Den Haag). More information can be found in the flyer. The syllabus for the course can be found here.

28 June - 9 July 2021
Globalization, Labor Market & Inequality
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof. Douglas Nelson, Professor of Economics at the Murphy Institute and the Department of Economics at Tulane University
More details about this course can be found in the flyer. The syllabus for the course can be found here.

18 and 19 March & 1, 2, and 9 April 2021
Shaping sustainable trade: what role for international trade law and policy?  
4 ECTS
Lecturers: Dominic Coppens, PhD, Senior Associate at Sidley Austin LLP, Brussels and Nicolas Lockhart, Partner at Sidley Austin LLP, Geneva. 
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

2020

14 – 18 September 2020
The International Law of State Responsibility
4 ECTS
Lecturers: Prof. Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Professor of Public International Law at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London and Prof. Antonios Tzanakopoulos, Associate Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Law and Fellow in Law at St Anne's College, University of Oxford
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

21 – 25 September 2020
Gravity Models and Panel Econometrics
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Michael Pfaffermayr, Professor of International Economics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria and senior researcher at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

2019

9 – 13 September 2019
State Responsibility
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Tarcisio Gazzini, Professor of International Law, School of Law at University of East Anglia, England
More details about this course can be found in the flyer and recommended reading materials.

16 – 20 September 2019
Institutions and the Political Economy of Development
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof. Axel Dreher, Professor of Economics, Chair of International and Development Politics, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany
More details about this course can be found in the flyer and syllabus.

4 – 8 November 2019
Economic Network Analysis
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof. Peter Egger, Professor of Applied Economics, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

2018

27 July – 3 August 2018
Applied General Equilibrium Theory
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof Douglas Nelson
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

27 – 31 August 2018
Foreign Direct Investment
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof Ronald Davies
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

10 – 14 September 2018
Treaty Interpretation
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof Micheal Hahn, Prof Gabrielle Marceau, Prof Georg Nolte
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

17 – 21 September 2018
Bayesian Econometrics
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof Sylvia Frühwirth-Schnatter
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

2017

7 – 11 August 2017
Political Economy of Globalisation
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof Douglas Nelson
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

14 – 18 August 2017
Quantitative Trade Policy Modelling
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Dr Eddie Bekkers, Prof Joseph Francois
More details about this course can be found in the course flyer.

4 – 8 December 2017
Treaty Interpretation
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Dr Isabelle Van Damme, Mr Graham Cook
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

2016

22 – 26 August 2016
International Trade, Labour Markets and Development
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Dr Eddie Bekkers
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

29 August – 2 September 2016
Advanced Panel Data Econometrics
4 ECTS
Lecturer: Prof Michael Pfaffermayr
More details about this course can be found in the flyer.

Thesis supervisor
The supervisor is responsible for ensuring that you carry out and report on your PhD research and that you skilfully apply theories and research methods to your thesis.

Members of the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences of the University of Bern oversee the WTI's doctoral programme. Please look closely at the research interests indicated by the professors in their personal web pages to learn more about the kinds of research topics that can be supervised at the WTI. The more general lines of research pursued by the professors who are available to supervise new researchers are set out below.

• Economics: International Trade Economics and Policy, International Migration, Climate Change, International Economics, International Macroeconomics and Finance
• Law: International and European Economic Law, WTO Law, Intellectual Property Law, Competition Law and Media Law
• Political Science: International Political Economy of Trade, International Organisations, International Economic Courts, Investment, Commodities

Programme Coordinator
For study-related questions, the programme coordinator Dr Octavio Fernández-Amador is your first point of contact. His role is to organise the core set of activities comprising the mandatory curriculum and to guide PhD students through the different steps of their studies. He regularly schedules events that provide PhD students with an opportunity to present and discuss research with peers.

English language support
The strength of your PhD is demonstrated not only by the content of your research, but also by how convincingly you present your argument. At the WTI, English language support is provided by the University of Bern's academic English services.

ECTS credits
PhDs generally take 3-5 years to complete. Once enrolled, WTI doctoral students will be required to collect a minimum of 24 ECTS credits in courses and other mandatory activities offered under the WTI Doctoral Programme. One credit equals approximately 25-30 hours of work.

The core set of activities composing the mandatory curriculum is meant to provide doctoral students with a uniquely structured programme which guides them through the different steps of their PhD studies and encourages interdisciplinarity. PhD students are also encouraged to earn extra credits (up to a total of 30 ECTS) through additional external activities such as presenting papers at conferences and publishing their work in academic journals.

Doctoral colloquia
One of the many benefits of being a PhD candidate at the WTI is obtaining peer feedback. You will be asked to present the results of your work at least once a year at a doctoral colloquium and to attend your colleagues’ presentations. Doctoral colloquia take place twice a year and provide a venue for the exchange of ideas, suggestions and comments. This is also where your thesis supervisor will provide guidelines and direction. The whole exercise provides a platform for you to practise the oral defence of your thesis.

Interdisciplinary seminar series
Every month, one doctoral student has the opportunity to present a piece of selected literature relating to trade and investment. The theme of the interdisciplinary seminar series changes every year and is selected by the doctoral coordinators and the thesis supervisors. This year PhD students are presenting a chapter from the book by Dunoff & Pollack, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of the Art (IL-IR). This is introductory compulsory reading for all PhD students at the WTI.

Database and citation software training
Several different software programmes for citation will be available to you, including Zotero. Zotero is a reference management programme that facilitates the collection, organisation, citation and sharing of research resources. You can take advantage of technical training in Zotero at the WTI.
Along with citation software training, you can benefit from training on legal and economic databases by librarians and external experts.

University of Bern admission requirements
PhD application form
PhD summer courses application form

How to apply

To apply, and for details of our requirements, please download the application form (Word document) on the right. Send your complete application by email to phd.applications@wti.org with the subject line: Application Doctoral Programme – ‘Discipline’ (‘Law’ or ‘Economics’ or ‘Political Science’). If you apply for the doctoral programme in law, please attach also your research proposal based on the proposal template on the right.

Short-listed applicants will get a conditional acceptance to WTI Doctoral School and will be able to get in touch with a potential supervisor. Only upon the completion of the admission process to doctoral studies at the University of Bern and the corresponding faculty, the conditional acceptance will become final.

For Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship applicants (see below under Fees and Funding > Funding opportunities), it is recommended that applications for the next academic year (fall semester) be sent by 31 August with the subject line: Early Application Doctoral Programme – ‘Discipline’ (‘Law’ or ‘Economics’ or ‘Political Science’)’’. Early notifications will be sent to successful applicants to support them in their scholarship application.

For any questions related to the application process, please contact our PhD programme coordination office.

Application process

Application deadline (all disciplines): 31 August (24:00 CET)
November: Notification of decision on conditional admission
December-March: Administrative enrolment of students with University of Bern and the the faculty of interest

Additional application deadline for law: 31 March (24:00 CET)
May: Notification of decision on conditional admission
June-September: Administrative enrolment of students with University of Bern and the the faculty of interest

Fees
The University of Bern determines tuition and semester fees for all programmes (see link on right). Students who have paid registration fees to the University of Bern are not charged a fee for the doctoral programme.

Funding opportunities
There are a number of ways to receive funding for your doctoral studies: 

• The Swiss Federal Commission for Scholarships for Foreign Students (FCS) awards postgraduate scholarships to foreign scholars and researchers (see link on right to Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships). Deadlines vary depending on the country of residence.
• Swiss National Science Foundation Doc.ch and Doc.mobility schemes. In both cases the application deadlines are 1 March and 1 September.

As the WTI is not in the position to fund your PhD, we encourage you to apply for outside funding with governments, foundations and other institutions once you have been academically admitted to the programme.

Current doctoral students - with year of commencement in brackets

Law:

Bhattacharya, Alexandra - Extraterritorial Application of Intellectual Property Law (2016)
Biksadsky, Boris (2018)
Cahueñas Muños, Hugo (2018)
Claros, Roberto - Exceptions that protect National Security and Public Order in IIAS: Challenges and Prospects for Latin American States (2014)
Imeli, Brigitta (2018)
Haqnazar, Umida - 'SPS in Eurasian Economic Union, comparison with WTO SPS and EU law (2017)
Kucheriava, Yuliia (2020)
Liu, Yinuo (2018)
Peng, Delei - The Balance between Foreign Investor Protection and State Regulation under New Treaties: China as a Host State (2016)
Schläpfer, Andrea - International Financial Assistance Agreements and Policy Conditionality: An Analysis of Legal Frameworks for Conditional Sovereign Lending (2015)
Singh, Shailja (2021)
Stacy, Sean - The Role of Law Reform Programs for Economic Growth (2016)
Vasquez, Maria del Carmen - Big Data, The Interpretation of Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) Clause in International Investment Arbitration Settlement (2017)
Weissert, Irina - The BRICS: A New Source of International Intellectual Property Standards? (2016)
Yakubkhodjaev, Umid (2018)
Wu, Hsin-Yi (2019)

Economics:

Ahmadzai, Khwaja Muhammad - Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Economic Growth in Landlocked Low Income Countries (2016)
DeSilvestro, Valentino - The Effects of Investment and Trade Agreements on Foreign Direct Investment, Technology Transfer and Global Value Chains Participation (2015)
Garcés Iriarte, Irene (2019)
Hauser, Selina (2020)
Razafindrahaingo, Nydiane (2021)
Sommer, Lily (2018)
Vogt, Achim - Non-tariff measures in international trade - Perspectives on costs and benefits (2016)

Political Science:

Angeli, Marietta - Preferential Trade Agreements and Developing Countries: The Challenges of Market Access (2017)
Ganeson, Kirthana (2021)
Klotz, Sebastian - Regulatory standard-setting and preferential trade agreements (2016)
Roux, Marine (2021)
Wagner, Patrick - Contagion Effect of Patient Zero: Inter- and Intraregional diffusion of labor standards through trade and foreign investment linkages (2017)