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Welcome to the Homepage of the PhD Council at Fysikum

About the PhD Council

The Fysikum PhD Council (Swedish Fysikums Doktorandråd) is the assembly of all PhD students at Fysikum, Stockholm University's Physics Department. Its purpose is to represent the PhD students interests in the different committees, boards and councils within the university.

PhD Council meetings

The Council, i.e. all PhD students, meets only twice per year. These meeting are also the place where representatives are elected. The rest of the year the PhD Council Board meets to discuss and make discussion.

PhD Council Board

The Board consists of one representative from each research group. It meets roughly every 6 weeks during the study year, i.e. September to June.

The protocols of the PhD Council Board can be found here.

Board members and officers

The PhD Council Board has one member per research group. Among the members there is a chairman, a vice-chairman a cashier. Furthermore, there are two revisors and an election committee.

Apart from that there is a party committee who arranges once or twice a year a party.

See PhD Council Board members and officers.

The party committee

The only permanent committee of the PhD Council is the party committee. It organizes once or twice per year a party at Albanova. These parties usually take place directly after one of the two PhD Council meetings every year.

Other special committees

It may happen that an issue cannot be dealt within the scope of PhD Council Board meetings. In such cases a special committee may be instated. Currently no such committee exists.

Statutes

The statutes of the PhD Council regulate the affairs of the Council, e.g. elections.

PhD representation in the university

In Fysikum

The PhD students have two representatives in Fysikum Board (Swedish Fysikum Styrelse) which decides all matters within the physics institution. Furthermore, there are PhD representatives in many of the committees within Fysikum.

For a list of PhD representatives see the list of PhD representatives at Fysikum.

The representatives are elected in the PhD Council spring meeting, which usually takes place in May.

On the faculty level

The PhD Council fall meeting (usually in November) elects one representative for the Faculty Council. The Faculty Council (Swedish Naturvetenskapliga Fakultetsrådet (NFR)) is the supreme student representation in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Stockholm University.

There are numerous committees on the faculty level, e.g. Teacher Proposal Board (Swedish Lärarförslagsnämden) which conducts interviews with applicants for assistant professor positions. Through these committees many important decisions are made. The students and especially the PhD students have representatives in these committees.

The Faculty Council elects these respresentatives. The Fysikum PhD Council may nominate PhD students for these positions.

For an overview of the committees and the PhD representatives from Fysikum in them see List of PhD representatives on the faculty level.

Compensation for the extra work

Being active as a PhD representatives can be time consuming. Therefore most positions are compensated by prolongation days. Certain positions on the faculty level give also extra money which is added to the salary. The details can be found in the lists of the members.

Documents for prolongation (Swedish):

• Prolongation rules from 2006
• Description of board and committee duties with prolongation

Life as a PhD at Fysikum

There is a general information sheet for new PhD students (last update 9 October 2008).

Length of PhD

Usuall the PhD at Fysikum takes 4 years without teaching and 5 years with teaching. The PhDs with teaching devote 20% of their time to institution duties, usually assistant work for courses.

Salary

The usual procedure at Fysikum is to start with two years (full-time) of utbildningsbidrag, a scholarship which gives a salary and health care, but not full pension benefits and other work-related benefits. It is one goal of the faculty to reduce the utbildningsbidrag to one year by 2015.

Utbildningsbidrag is defined by law to be 15,500 SEK per month.

The utbildningsbidrag is followed by a regular employment in Stockholm University. The current salaries (March 2012) are (see also here):

• Starting salary: 22,600 SEK per month
• As soon as 50% of the PhD degree requirements have been reached: 24,700 SEK per month
• As soon as 80% of the PhD degree requirements have been reached: 26,000 SEK per month

All the values are before taxes. You have to pay income tax, which amounts roughly to 30%.

PhD students with teaching are employed for the 20% of institution duties they do. This means for utbildningsbidrag that the PhD student received 80% of the utbildningsbidrag and 20% of the starting salary, thus raising the utbildningsbidrag somewhat.

Working hours and vacation

The utbildningsbidrag is not an employment so that presence cannot be required. Working times and vacation days are up to agreement between supervisor and PhD student.

For employed PhD students there are fixed steps, depending on your age (see [1]):

• Until the year you turn 29 it is: 1,756 working hours per year and 28 paid vacation days
• From the year you turn 30: 1,732 working hours per year and 31 paid vacation days
• From the year you turn 30: 1,700 working hours per year and 35 paid vacation days

Other resources

• PhD Handbook of the faculty from 2009 (Swedish)
• PhD student handbook from the Swedish higher education authority
• Crisis and catastrophe plan for Fysikum (Swedish)
• Work environment plan on the internal pages of Fysikum (Swedish)
• Fysikum's internal homepage (Swedish)
• Fysikum homepage
• PhD information from Fysikum (Swedish)