How to Find a PhD Supervisor in Italy (and Get Funded)

Every other country guide on this site starts the same way: find the professor, get their agreement, then apply. Italy breaks that pattern entirely, and applying that same strategy there wastes real time. Italian PhDs run through a public competition, a concorso pubblico, where you apply to a university's doctoral programme as a whole, not to a specific professor's lab, and funding isn't a separate application, it's simply where you rank in that competition.

The concorso pubblico: you apply to a programme, not a professor

Every Italian PhD programme, called a dottorato di ricerca, admits candidates through a concorso pubblico, a public competition announced through an official call, or bando. You submit your application to the doctoral programme itself, covering your intended research area broadly, sit an entrance examination and interview, and are ranked against other applicants based on that evaluation. This is structurally different from the UK, Germany, or Belgium model covered elsewhere on this site, where securing a specific professor's agreement before you apply is the entire first step. In Italy, that professor-specific step generally comes later, a supervisor is typically assigned or confirmed once you're already admitted into the programme, not negotiated in advance as a precondition for applying.

Where the funding actually comes from: your rank in the concorso

Positions within a given concorso are generally split into funded places, con borsa, and unfunded places, senza borsa, and which category you land in depends directly on where you rank once the competition closes, not on a separate scholarship form filed elsewhere. Placing high enough in the ranking to be offered a funded place is the funding mechanism itself. That means your entire strategy for securing funding in Italy comes down to how competitive your concorso application and interview performance actually are, not a parallel scholarship search running alongside your university application the way it would in most other countries. Always check a specific programme's published bando directly to see how many funded versus unfunded places exist for that particular cycle, since the ratio varies significantly by university and by year.

What the stipend actually pays

Public sources put Italy's national minimum PhD stipend at roughly €15,343 gross a year, though this is a floor rather than a ceiling, many universities and individual programmes pay more, with some specific scholarship calls publishing figures in the roughly €16,000 to €17,600 gross range. Treat any specific number as a planning reference rather than a fixed rule, and confirm the actual stipend published in your target programme's own bando, since amounts vary by university and are adjusted periodically. PhD candidates in Italy are generally treated as receiving social security contributions and healthcare coverage alongside the stipend, with registration fees waived and the regional student tax typically refunded, a meaningfully different administrative structure from a pure fellowship model.

So does contacting a professor matter at all?

Yes, even though it isn't the formal gate it is elsewhere. Reaching out to a professor whose current work fits your interests before you apply can still meaningfully strengthen your concorso application: a research proposal that engages specifically with a named researcher's actual recent publications, and shows you've thought about where you'd fit within their group, reads as far stronger to an evaluation committee than a generic proposal describing a broad research area. Some applicants also use early contact to get a sense of which specific research lines within a programme currently have real capacity and support, informal information a published bando won't spell out. Treat this as a way to strengthen your application, not as a precondition you must clear before you're allowed to apply, which is the opposite emphasis from how outreach functions in most other countries covered on this site.

Applying with a foreign degree, and the UNIVERSITALY portal

Non-Italian applicants generally need a master's degree, or a recognized equivalent qualification, from a foreign university, typically expected to be completed by around October 31 of the relevant application year. International applicants usually complete pre-enrollment procedures through the UNIVERSITALY portal, following the specific requirements set out in that year's Ministerial Circular covering international student admissions. These requirements and exact deadlines shift by cycle and can vary between universities, so confirm the current process directly with your target university's international admissions office rather than working from a previous year's instructions, especially since the pre-enrollment step runs on its own separate timeline from the concorso application itself.

A practical search order

• Identify Italian universities with doctoral programmes active in your specific field, and check each programme's published bando for its application window and funded-versus-unfunded place ratio.
• Complete the UNIVERSITALY pre-enrollment process for your foreign degree well ahead of the concorso deadline, since this runs on its own separate timeline.
• Identify professors within the programme actively publishing in your subfield, and reach out to strengthen your research proposal, even though their agreement isn't a formal precondition to applying.
• Prepare thoroughly for the entrance exam and interview, since your placement in the ranking is what actually determines whether you receive a funded or unfunded place.

GradScoutFunding is built for that professor-identification step, useful in Italy for strengthening a proposal even though it isn't the formal gate it is elsewhere: it searches professors by field and country, confirms they're actively publishing, and drafts a personalized first email grounded in their real recent paper for you to review and send yourself. It can't confirm your placement in a concorso ranking or a specific programme's funded-place quota, only that a professor is active and reachable. The free tier gives 2 credits with no card required, and paid credit packs are one-time purchases that never expire.

Common questions