Sports and Human Movement Sciences

What is a PhD (Doctorate)?

#laboratoiresBeing a doctoral student means conducting your doctorate within a Doctoral School: preparing for a degree while exercising your first professional activity... A doctoral student is a researcher in a training phase.

Doctoral training is training in and through research. It leads to the production of new knowledge. It includes personal research work carried out by the doctoral student. It is supplemented by additional training validated by the doctoral school. It covers work of scientific, economic, social, technological or cultural interest. It culminates in the award of the national doctorate diploma. The diploma, issued by an accredited public institution of higher education, confers on its holder the grade and title of doctor.

Being a doctoral student at the Doctoral School "Sports and human movement sciences" means:

• receiving training in and through research
• being prepared to pursue a professional career after your doctorate.

To fulfill these missions, the Doctoral School offers courses that complement the cross-disciplinary classes offered by co-accredited institutions. See the following link (only "open" courses are visible):

https://www.adum.fr/script/formations.pl?site=PNan_SSMMH

The Doctoral School has established a number of rules governing the pursuit of doctoral studies in host laboratories, in order to guarantee the quality of the research carried out and the smooth running of the thesis. In return, doctoral students undertake to abide by all these rules, a commitment materialized by the signing of a Thesis Charter, jointly with their thesis director, and by the signing of the internal regulations:

How to join us

If you'd like to join our program, you'll need to secure funding or apply for the annual competition for the doctoral funding offered by the doctoral school (“White programs”). There are a different organizations and institutions that fund doctoral projects. 

• Doctoral contracts ("white programs")

Every year, the Doctoral School organizes a competition in May-June. Thesis proposals are available on our website in March.
Doctoral students who pass the annual competition are awarded doctoral contracts funded by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. 

• Other fundings

Some doctoral students can be funded by research contracts obtained by their thesis supervisors
 

• French (BGF) or foreign (BGE) government scholarships

Campus France is responsible for managing international student mobility. You can consult the directory of grants managed by Campus France.
Foreign governments also offer thesis funding. 

The International Relations Departments of the Université Paris-Saclay and Université Paris-Cité manage the CSC (Chinese Scholarship Council) program, offering thesis funding in partnership with China

• CIFRE grants

The CIFRE scheme (Industrial Conventions for Training through Research) subsidizes any company incorporated under French law that hires a PhD student to work at the heart of a research collaboration with a public laboratory. The work will culminate in a thesis to be defended within three years. 
The CIFRE program is coordinated by the ANRT (Association Nationale Recherche Technologie).

• International joint PhD programs

International co-supervision of doctoral theses, governed by an agreement between two higher education establishments, one French, the other foreign, enables doctoral students to prepare their thesis in their own country and in France, under specific conditions: 

• PhD students work under the responsibility of a thesis director in each of the countries concerned,
• thesis preparation alternates between the two institutions,
• the language in which the thesis is written is defined in the agreement,
• the thesis is defended only once, but the doctoral student receives two diplomas.

In all cases, the PhD candidate need the support of a supervisor. PhD candidates are invited to get in touch with a potential supervisor before contacting the Doctoral School. To find the teams and supervisors that interest you, look at the list of laboratories and visit their websites.

(last update 03.27.2024)

Admission and enrolment procedures differ from one university to another, and from one year to the next (1st, 2nd, 3rd and beyond).

Registration in 1^st year of thesis

• at Université Paris-Saclay

The full procedure for Université Paris-Saclay can be found here. A summary (in French) of the thesis registration procedure at Université Paris-Saclay is available via the link below.

• at Université Paris-Cité

When applying to Université Paris-Cité, it's important to distinguish between the "pedagogical" stages (via the Adum website) and the administrative registration stages (via eCandidat). The document below details this procedure, which combines two interfaces (Adum + eCandidat).

• at Université Paris-Nanterre

Contact directly the ED's deputy director (Sylvie Martin-Vernazza) and/or the ED's assistant for the University of Paris-Nanterre, whose details are given on the Contact page. 

Registration in 2^nd and 3^rd year of thesis

In order to re-register for a thesis, you must have completed your individual follow-up committee and the CSI booklet must have been submitted by the CSI referent or by the doctoral school on Adum.
The CSI booklet includes the updated skills portfolio, the annual report and the CSI report for the current year.

• at Université Paris-Saclay
• at Université Paris-Cité
• at Université Paris-Nanterre

(Re)registration is possible every year from July 8 (approx).

Note: if you plan to defend your thesis before 12/31, you do not need to re-register and therefore do not need to submit a new CSI.

(last update: 03.27.2024)

PhD follow-up: Individual Monitoring Committee (IMC)

A thesis should normally take 3 years to complete. In the case of continuous (lifelong) training, this rule may be waived.

The monitoring procedures must enable the doctoral school to ensure that the doctoral candidate's personalized training includes each of the elements that characterize doctoral training and enables him or her to develop skills and acquire professional research experience. The two main elements of monitoring are:

• the annual progress report written by the PhD student 
• the annual report written by the members of the Individual Monitoring Committee (IMC)

Annual report

An annual progress report on the thesis must be drawn up before each Monitoring Committee meeting. This report must be written in the Monitoring Committee Booklet, and is one of the documents made available to Monitoring Committee members. The training program followed, in relation to the skills to be developed, must also be detailed in the Portfolio (p.4 of the booklet).

Individual Monitoring Committee (IMC)

The purpose of the Individual Monitoring Committee (IMC) is to monitor doctoral students: (1) by assessing the progress of their research work and the smooth running of their thesis, (2) by providing advice and guidance on their research activities, training and preparation for professional integration, (3) by helping the doctoral student, if necessary, to resolve any problems that may arise.

How is it composed?

The IMC is composed of at least one researcher or teacher-researcher from outside the doctoral school and one teacher-researcher from within the doctoral school, excluding the thesis director(s). Of these two members, one must be a specialist in the discipline or related to the thesis field, and the other must be external to the thesis field. Within the Sports and Movement Science doctoral school, an IMC member is considered "outside the field" if he or she is developing a scientific topic that is sufficiently distant from that of the thesis supervisors that he or she is unlikely to collaborate with them or has already co-published with them.

One of the two members of the committee, if possible the specialist member, must have the HDR degree, and IMC members may not be reviewers on the thesis jury (but may be members of the jury as examiners). PhD students must be consulted on the composition of their committee before the 1st meeting. The committee is appointed a few months after the 1st registration, and its composition remains the same for the duration of the thesis, as far as possible.

When does it take place?

The IMC meeting must be held between April and June, if a thesis re-registration is planned for the following academic year.

Who organizes the meetings?

The organization of the thesis committee is the responsibility of the doctoral student and his/her supervisory team, who are responsible for the logistics.

How is a IMC meeting organized?

It consists of an interview (face-to-face or remote) preceded by the sending of documents at least 8 days in advance (e.g. written summary of the thesis topic, results obtained, progress of the research work, provisional timetable, articles submitted or published, list of training courses attended, etc.).

The interviews are organized in 3 different stages: (1) presentation of the progress of the work and discussion without the thesis supervisor, (2) interview with the doctoral candidate without the thesis supervisor, (3) interview with the thesis supervisor without the doctoral candidate. 

The members of the IMC must jointly submit a written report (in the IMC booklet, downloadable below). In this report, the IMC makes recommendations regarding the continuation of the thesis and advises on re-registration. The IMC booklet must be sent (unsigned) in Word format to the doctoral student, so that he or she can add to the booklet the following year, and filed (dated and signed) in pdf format on Adum by one of the IMC members.

Université Paris-Saclay has published a monitoring committee guide detailing best practices, recommendations and a self-assessment questionnaire for links of interest.

Don't hesitate to consult the page dedicated to the IMC on the Université Paris-Saclay’s website, even if your university is Paris-Cité or Paris-Nanterre.

Complementary training

In addition to training through laboratory research, doctoral training also includes group training and work experience activities designed to: (1) consolidate the scientific culture of doctoral students, (2) prepare them for their future careers in both the public and private sectors, and (3) promote international openness.
All the rules described below are summarized in the downloadable summary document:

Timing of training courses

Each doctoral student must earn a minimum of 30 points (or credits) over the duration of his or her thesis, as specified below.
He or she must validate a minimum of 8 points each year, and a minimum of 20 points in the first two years.

Breakdown of credits to be validated by objective

The different ways to validate credits

Doctoral students are invited to organize their complementary training plan from the start of their thesis, using the Excel file below:

Compulsory training

The regulations require doctoral students to take training in (1) ethics and scientific integrity, (2) the challenges of open science, and (3) the challenges of sustainable development. These courses must be completed in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of the thesis.

List of training courses

Click on the link below to access the shared catalog of cross-disciplinary training courses (Université Paris-Saclay):

https://www.universite-paris-saclay.fr/en/recherche/doctorat-et-hdr/complementary-doctoral-activities-and-training

Click on the link below to access the 2023-2024 program of training courses offered by the ED SSMMH (open classes)

https://www.adum.fr/script/formations.pl?site=PNan_SSMMH

Difficulties encountered

If a PhD student encounters difficulties at any stage of his or her studies, he or she can contact the doctoral school's director or deputy director in order to find a favorable solution. Even before this stage, doctoral students are advised to contact the doctoral students elected to the doctoral school's council, as soon as problems begin to worry them.

In the event of persistent conflict between the doctoral student and the thesis director or laboratory director, a mediator can be called in. Without relieving anyone of their responsibilities, the mediator listens to the parties, proposes a solution and gets everyone to accept it, with a view to completing the thesis. The mediator's mission implies his or her impartiality; he or she may be chosen from among the members of the management committee of the host team or doctoral school, or from outside the university. If local mediation fails, the doctoral student and the director of the host team or doctoral school may ask the President of the University to have the Scientific Advisory Board appoint a mediator from outside the University. A final appeal can be made to the President of the University. 

(last update: 03.28.2024)

A 1^st author publication accepted after a peer review process, in a journal or on a server, is required before the thesis defense. Simply submitting a manuscript to a peer-review process does not mean that it has been accepted for publication. To find out how to submit a peer-reviewed manuscript to a server, we recommend that you visit the following site:
https://peercommunityin.org/pci-friendly-journals/

To find out how to defend your thesis at Université Paris-Saclay, click on the following link.

You can view upcoming thesis defense sessions by clicking on the link below:

https://www.adum.fr/as/ed/calendrier.pl?site=PNan_SSMMH

(last update: 03.28.2024)

Assistant of the Doctoral School at Université Paris-Saclay (including UVSQ and UEVE): 

Marie-Pierre Richoux 01.69.15.61.98 marie-pierre.richoux@universite-paris-saclay.fr

Deputy director at Université Paris-Cité: 

Bernard ANDRIEU : bernard.andrieu@parisdescartes.fr

Assistant of the Doctoral School at Université Paris-Nanterre : 

Julie ABENIA DIARRA :  ed566@liste.parisnanterre.fr

Deputy director at Université Paris-Nanterre : 

Sylvie VERNAZZA-MARTIN : symartin@parisnanterre.fr