Erasmus Mundus (LAST-JD) Scholarships

Overview

The Erasmus Mundus (LAST-JD) Joint International Doctoral Degree in “Law, Science and Technology” is an interdisciplinary integrated doctorate designed to address new challenges in legal, socio-ethical and technical domains arising from the information society and newly emerging technologies. There are rapidly evolving sectors of Information Technology and Life Sciences that need legal and ethical instruments for avoiding malpractice and for shaping policies and strategies in conducting scientific research and disseminating its results to industry and society. New opportunities emerge to use Information Technology to face the complexity of Law in contemporary society. All this requires a set of interdisciplinary competencies that are usually lacking in the graduate market due to a lack of vision and strategy.

The “Law, Science and Technology” doctorate aims to address the problem of fragmentation that exists in Europe in this interdisciplinary area, by setting up a robust doctoral programme inspired by the Stanford programme in Law, Science and Technology, while also addressing the unique requirements of Europe by looking at the impact of European cultural identities on ethical, medical and legal discussion, as well as at the specifics of European regulations. The programme covers three different research fields with its curricula:

“Bioethics and Biolaw”, which looks at the legal and ethical problems of advances in biology and medicine;

“ICT Law”, addressing the legal risks and opportunities in ICT, and

“Legal Informatics”, an area of informatics taking into account legal issues, including alI techniques applied to legal domain.

This programme promotes the excellence, innovation and competitiveness of Europe in critical legal and ethical fields such as the regulation of privacy, genomics and biobank, e-government, e-health and e-commerce, the right to free speech on the Internet and the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) with respect to new technologies. Moreover, it furthers the design of new software to support the legal profession, including systems based on the explicit representation of laws and regulations in computable form, including the topic of “check compliance” with international, European and national legal frameworks.


Outcome

Upon completion of the programme, graduates will become highly skilled researchers and professionals, matching the requirements of public and private sectors.

They could be employed, e.g., in:

• law firms working on IPR, privacy, e-commerce, and patenting
• high tech software houses where Artificial Intelligence is applied
• specialised research centres such as medical genetic centres, nanotechnology centres and robotic laboratories
• government offices which manage innovative ICT and eGovernment, eJustice and eParliament projects
• ethic committees which analyse scientific innovations and produce policy documents

Partner Universities

• University of Bologna, ALMA MATER STUDIORUM, CIRSFID, Italy (Co-ordinating institution)
• University of Torino, Department of Computer Science and and Law Faculty, Italy
• Autonomous University of Barcelona, Institute for Law and Technology, Spain
• Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius, Department of e-Business, Lithuania
• University of Luxembourg, Department of Computer Science, Luxembourg

CRITERIA AND PRINCIPLES

Admission to the programme is open to applicants who have received a 2nd Level Master Degree (120 ECTS after 180 ECTS of bachelor) or a Single Cycle Degree(minimal 300 ECTS), or a comparable university degree (Second Cycle qualification), as required by the partner universities for admission to doctoral studies.

The candidate shall speak English so, if he/she is non-native English speaker, is required a recognized international English test Certificate obtained in the last three years before expected starting date of the LAST-JD course. For those who studied in countries where the English is the official language, is required an official letter stating that your university studies were undertaken in English. The English Language Proficiency is required accoding to the following criteria:

• IELTS min: 6.5; TOEFL min: 220 CBT, 550 PBT, 80 iBT; TOEIC min: 780, Cambridge min. C.A.E, Trinity min. GESE and ISE Intermediate, GRE min. Verbal Reasoning. 480, Quantitative Reasoning 600, Analytical Writing 4.0.

We consider two category of doctorate candidates:

***Category A

Doctoral candidates who come from a country other than “a Member State of the European Union, an EEA-EFTA State (i.e. Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein), and who are not residents nor have carried out their main activity (studies, work, etc.) for more than a total of 12 months over the last five years in one of these countries.

***Category B

Any doctoral candidate who do not fulfil the Category A criteria defined above.

FELLOWSHIPS

There are excellent fellowship opportunities for students accepted to the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate programme  in “Law, Science and Technology”.  These  fellowships, divided between category A  and category B  candidates, will be given to the highest ranked PhD candidates during the study period which lasts three years.

We consider the following two categories:

***Category A fellowships can be awarded to doctoral candidates, selected by EM LAST-JD consortium, who come from a country other than:

•  a Member State of the European Union
• an EEA-EFTA  State (i.e. Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein)

and

• who are not residents nor have carried out their main activity (studies, work, etc.) for more than a total of 12 months over the last five years in one of these countries.

The only exception to this rule applies to Third-Country doctoral candidates who have previously received an Erasmus Mundus masters scholarship in order to follow an EMMC.

***Category B fellowships can be awarded to any doctoral candidate selected by EMJD consortium and who do not fulfil the Category A criteria defined above.

___________

The approximate number of PhD scholarships that EM LAST-JD offers for the current admission period is:

• 5 scholarships category A (and 1 for the “Western Balkans and Turkey Window”)
• 3 scholarships category B

Only candidates who have applied to and have been accepted by the EM LAST-JD consortium, in accordance with its specific students’ application and selection criteria, are eligible for a scholarship. Both category A and B students are welcome to apply to the EM LAST-JD PhD programme

• Western Balkan countries include Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo under  UNSC Resolution 1244/99, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,  Montenegro and Serbia

REQUIRED DOCUMENTS

The application form requires candidates the following data and documents:

• CV (European format)
• Degree certificate/diploma 1 and Academic Transcript
• Draft research project
• Motivation letter
• Recommendation letters
• English test result
• Other qualifications
• Photo
• Copy of passport

DOCUMENTATION – UPDATED!

Call for Application 2012/2013: rules for the application form.
Doctorate Agreement Template: template of the doctorate rules.
Application Form Category A: form in word for the category A applicants.
Application Form Category B: form in word for the category B applicants.

How to make the application submission.

1. Read the Call for Application and the Application Form carefully.
2. Register yourself in the web system at the page.
3. Compile the Application Form.
4. Prepare all the documentation in PDF format and package it in an unique zip file.
5. Submit the zip file using the registration identification codes using this page.
6. You will receive an email of acknowledgement.
NOTE: double submission is not allowed.

DEADLINE: 11 February 2012, 23:59pm CET.

Contact Detail

Prof. Monica Palmirani

Associate professor in Legal Informatics
CIRSFID, University of Bologna

VIA GALLIERA, 3 IT – 40121 BOLOGNA

Email: last-jd@unibo.it

Director:

Prof. Carla Faralli
Full professor of Philosophy of Law and Bioethic
CIRSFID, University of Bologna

http://www.last-jd.eu/



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