Grants and Writing Resources for University of Geneva

At the Faculty of Medicine's 2025 prize ceremony, held in June at the CMU, 13 of the 34 laureates on the palmarès won student prizes. Their six award categories included three master's dissertation prizes and awards for the best oral presentation and best immersion report in community medicine.

Dissertation Support

Doctoral students and postdocs from every faculty can join Espace Thèse+, a peer writing workshop run by the Graduate Campus with the Bibliothèque de Genève and the Maison de l'histoire. Sessions are held at set times through the year in historic buildings such as Les Délices; the evening Nocturnes run until 22:00. Places are limited.

The Graduate Campus also offers workshops on professional development, and transferable-skills courses are shared with the universities of Fribourg, Lausanne and Neuchâtel through the CUSO (doctorate at UNIGE).

Presenting Research

Ma thèse en 180 secondes at UNIGE is co-organised by the teaching and learning support unit (SEA) and the communication service, and the 2027 edition will be its eleventh regional final. Entry is open to PhD students past their first year who present in French. Finalists get free coaching and theatre-technique workshops. The jury awards CHF 1,000, CHF 750 and CHF 500, the audience prize is CHF 500, and the jury's top three go on to the Swiss national final.

Thesis Prizes and Publication Grants

In the Geneva School of Social Sciences, the Prix Universal rewards original work in economic and social sciences: CHF 2,000 for a doctoral thesis and CHF 1,000 for a master's thesis, with candidates nominated by their committees. The same page lists the Fonds Rappard, which pays up to CHF 2,000 toward publishing a doctoral thesis defended in the faculty, within three years of the defence.

Research Funding

The only way UNIGE funds doctoral students directly is through assistant positions, and some external options exist (doctorate at UNIGE). The Faculty of Humanities keeps a long list on its resources for doctoral students page. It includes the faculty's own financial aid, subsidies that help non-salaried doctoral students attend conferences, and the Centre Maurice Chalumeau's doctoral grant of up to CHF 66,000 a year for up to three years. A doctoral student in German in the final year of the thesis can receive the CHF 20,000 Fondation Haimoff grant.

Where Theses Are Published

The university asks that deposits be open access, with restricted or private access and embargoes available when third-party rights require them (deposit rules). Master's theses can be deposited too.

For a final edit before submission, our PhD-level editors work with UNIGE students at every level. See our University of Geneva dissertation and thesis editing and University of Geneva essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• The Lecture as a High-Stakes Professional Presentation
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter
• From Dissertation to Publication: The Final Scholarly Synthesis