The NTNU PhD: A Trial Lecture, Two Opponents and Three Weeks in Public

This is the first of our Norwegian guides, so it is worth setting out how a Norwegian doctorate differs from the systems covered elsewhere in this set. Several things that candidates from the UK, India or the US find surprising are normal here.

What a Norwegian PhD looks like

It is a degree and usually a job. Most Norwegian PhD candidates are employed, commonly on a contract that includes required duties (pliktarbeid), typically teaching or departmental work. That shapes the regulations: NTNU's rules refer to employment, to external employers, and to obligations that follow from being staff.

It is credit-bearing. The PhD has a nominal duration of three years full-time and includes a training component of at least 30 credits. This is coursework in the European credit sense, not an afterthought.

It ends in public. The closing sequence is a trial lecture and an open disputation, with the thesis publicly available beforehand.

NTNU states the four things the degree is awarded on:

• An approved academic thesis
• Approved completion of the required coursework or other academic training
• An approved trial lecture
• An approved public defence

All four, independently.

The clock, and what does not count

Maximum six (6) years from the starting date to the date on which the thesis is submitted.

With an important set of exclusions:

Any leaves of absence, lengthy periods of absence due to illness, required duties and approved part-time study are not to be included in this 6-year period.

So the 25 percent duty work attached to a four-year contract does not eat your research clock, nor does parental leave or documented sick leave. Where study is interrupted for authorised reasons, the agreement period is extended correspondingly.

The consequence of overrunning is unusually blunt:

If the maximum period of study is exceeded, the candidate loses the right to defend the thesis.

Which makes the record-keeping worth doing properly. If you have taken leave, done duty work or studied part-time, make sure those periods are formally registered rather than merely true.

Assessment

Once the Faculty approves your application for assessment:

• An expert committee of at least three members is appointed
• It assesses the thesis, the trial lecture and the public defence
• The Faculty sets a deadline for the committee's report, normally no more than three months

If the committee recommends revision and the Faculty allows it, a new time limit runs from the date of resubmission.

Your right to respond

A provision worth knowing before you need it:

The assessment committee's report is submitted to the Faculty, which forwards it to the PhD candidate. The candidate is given ten (10) working days to submit written comments on the report.

If you do not wish to comment, you must tell the Faculty so in writing. Ten working days is short, so read the report immediately rather than setting it aside.

The closing sequence

The trial lecture is the part people underestimate

It is an independent part of the examination, not a warm-up. The topic is assigned, so it is deliberately not your thesis: the point is to see whether you can teach and reason across your field at short notice.

Two weeks' notice, 45 minutes, on someone else's choice of subject. Prepare for it as a distinct piece of work. Candidates who spend the fortnight rehearsing their defence and improvising the lecture are the ones who get caught.

And it must be approved before the defence proceeds. An unapproved trial lecture stops the whole thing.

The three weeks in public

Making the thesis available three weeks ahead is not a deposit formality. It means colleagues, rival groups and anyone else can read it and turn up. Norwegian disputations are genuinely public events.

The opponents

There are normally to be two opponents. They must be members of the assessment committee and are appointed by the Faculty.

So the people who judged your thesis on paper are the people who question you in the room.

Article-based theses

Common in Norway, and governed clearly:

If a paper has been produced in cooperation with other authors, the candidate must follow the norms for co-authorship generally accepted in that field and in accordance with international standards. If the thesis consists primarily of papers, the candidate must normally be the main author or first author of at least half the papers.

A thesis containing papers written by more than one author must include a signed declaration.

Where papers are included, an account of how they are interrelated must be part of the thesis. That connecting material is what makes a collection of articles into a thesis, and it is routinely underweighted.

There are also limits on including work prepared jointly by several candidates, so if you and another PhD candidate have co-produced a paper, check that provision before planning either thesis around it.

Faculty supplementary rules matter

NTNU's central regulations are supplemented at faculty level, and those supplements can be specific. As an illustration, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (DMF) states:

• The thesis must normally be written in English
• The scope should be a research contribution equivalent to 2.5 years of full-time work, with 0.5 years accounted for by the training component
• The thesis should normally consist of three scientific articles or manuscripts publishable in peer-reviewed international journals

Those are DMF's rules, not NTNU's universally. Other faculties differ. Find your own faculty's supplementary provisions, because the number of papers expected is exactly the sort of thing that varies and exactly the sort of thing you need to know in year one.

The training component must be relevant to the research project, thematically or methodically, and the plan for it is specified in the admission application. Changing it later requires applying to do so.

If you are externally funded or externally employed

For candidates with external funding or an external workplace, an agreement must be entered into between the Faculty and the external party. As a rule, the agreement must be signed before formal admission or shortly afterwards.

Intellectual property with cooperating institutions is regulated in a separate agreement. Where you are employed by NTNU, NTNU's rules govern your obligation to report research results with commercial potential; candidates with an external employer carry a corresponding obligation.

If industry money or an employer is involved in your doctorate, get these agreements settled at the start. They are far harder to negotiate once results exist.

The dr.philos. alternative

Norway retains a separate doctorate, the dr.philos., for candidates who have not followed an organised PhD programme. It has its own regulations, linked above. If you are an experienced researcher without a PhD place, it is worth knowing the route exists.

Pre-submission checklist

• Training component of at least 30 credits completed, as specified in my admission application
• Any changes to the training component formally approved
• Within six years from the start, with leave, illness, duty work and part-time study properly registered as excluded
• My faculty's supplementary provisions read, not just the central regulations
• If article-based: main or first author on at least half the papers
• Signed declaration prepared for every multi-authored paper
• Account of how the papers interrelate written as a substantive part of the thesis
• Any external funder or employer agreement signed
• Thesis ready to be public three weeks before the defence
• Trial lecture treated as separate preparation, on an assigned topic, inside 45 minutes
• Ten working days reserved to respond to the committee report if needed

Where to get help

Your Faculty appoints the assessment committee, sets deadlines and approves the trial lecture and defence. Your supervisor owns the academic content. The assessment guidelines linked above tell you what the committee is actually asked to judge, which is the single most useful document to read before submitting.

If the writing is the bottleneck, our thesis writing support works chapter by chapter, our PhD thesis help covers doctoral work, and our research paper support is relevant for an article-based thesis.