Other links:
Other links:
The PhD in Philosophy programme conforms to all Ashoka PhD programme guidelines. Additional guidelines specific to the Philosophy PhD programme are described below. The Philosophy programme reserves the right to revise the curriculum and requirements from time to time.
Anyone with a 3 or 4 year bachelor’s degree in any subject or an MSc/MA/MCom/MPhil/MTech/LLM degree or equivalent in any subject is eligible to apply for admission.
PhD students who require funding and who do not have outside funding like a JRF or other fellowship will receive approximately 50,000 INR per month, plus 10,000 house rent allowance. The amount received is determined by university-wide policies. PhD students who avail themselves of Ashoka-managed housing, which is available near campus, will not receive the 10,000 house rent allowance. Tuition fees are as listed in the Ashoka PhD programme guidelines and are approximately 12,500 INR per semester. Candidates who receive outside funding like a JRF have their tuition fees waived.
Applications must be submitted through the Ashoka application website. All materials should be submitted through the website, not through email, except as noted below. Applicants must include in the first step of the application process (by uploading through the Ashoka application website):
All application materials must be written by the candidate without the use of Large Language Models or other AI tools. All applications must include statements of purpose, writing samples, transcripts, and contact information or letters from recommenders.
Selection is a two step process. The first step is submission of the application. The second step is an online interview with shortlisted applicants. Admitted students will be selected from among the interviewed applicants. All application decisions are made by the Philosophy department.
The deadline for applications for students starting in the 2027-28 academic year is not yet decided. When the deadline is decided upon, it will be posted on this webpage.
The PhD will last five years. The first two years will consist of coursework with the rest of the time focused on research.
In year 1 and year 2, students enroll in courses. A typical course load is 3 courses (12 credits) per semester.
Students must satisfy a logic requirement by the end of the first semester by scoring sufficiently highly on a logic exam administered by the Department or by getting a B+ or better in PHI-1060: Symbolic Logic. The logic exam will be offered once per semester. Exams in excess of this can be offered at the discretion of the faculty responsible for administering the exam. Students may attempt the exam at most once per year. Students who fail to satisfy the logic requirement can petition the DGS for an extension of up to one semester. The deadline for raising the petition is within one month of failing to satisfy the requirement.
Students must enroll in a proseminar course in the first semester covering research and publication ethics and research methodology.
Students must complete at least 48 credits of coursework. There are two distribution requirements that students must satisfy: general category and area. Course categorizations for the purposes of both distribution requirements are described here.
The general category requirement: students must complete 8 credits in History of Western (HW), 8 credits in Contemporary Core (CC), and 8 credits in Indian and Non-Western Philosophy (IN).
The area requirement: students must complete 8 credits in metaphysics & epistemology (i.e. Epistemology or Metaphysics), 8 credits in Value Theory (i.e. a course in Normative Ethics, Applied Ethics, Metaethics, Topics in Ethics, Ethics Misc, Social and Political Philosophy, or Aesthetics / Philosophy of Art & Literature), and 8 credits in science, language, and mind (i.e. Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, and Philosophy of Mind).
If a student would like a course to count towards a requirement that its course number would not allow it to count towards, they can petition the DGS before three weeks into the semester during which the course occurs.
One course can count towards both the relevant general category requirement and the relevant area requirement. No course can count towards multiple area requirements.
Students should consult with their advisor about course registration each semester to ensure proper breadth and depth of education. Course requirements can be waived by the DGS if good reasons for doing so are provided. Requests to waive course requirements may be submitted at any point prior to advancement to candidacy, but students are expected to submit them as soon as possible. The DGS will not waive course requirements simply because a student has failed to adequately consider the requirements while making choices about which courses to take and is now in danger of failing to advance to the next stage in the programme.
Any course not taught by Ashoka Philosophy faculty (visiting or permanent) must be approved by the DGS in order to count towards the degree. Any courses apart from PHI-1060 that are not 5000 level courses must be approved by the DGS in order to count towards the degree.
The purpose of the oral qualifying exams is to ensure that the student has acquired a breadth and depth of philosophical knowledge in their coursework sufficient to license moving forward in the program.
Oral qualifying exams are held at the end of the second year. By the fifth week of the second semester that year, the student provides to the DGS a list of papers that they propose to submit for the oral exam. The list must include a minimum of three papers. At least three of the papers on the list must be from courses the student has done as part of their first two years in the PhD programme, although the student may revise the papers between the completion of the class and submission to the oral exam committee.
By the seventh week of the second semester of the student’s second year, the DGS selects a committee of four Ashoka professors, at least three of whom must be from the Philosophy department. By the eighth week of the second semester, the committee selects three papers from the list to be the subjects of the oral exam. The oral exam is then scheduled. Oral exams should be concluded before the beginning of the summer semester after the student’s fourth semester. Failure to complete oral exams by this time constitutes failure of the exams.
At least two weeks before the oral exam, the student sends copies of the papers to all the members of the committee. The exam is 90 minutes long, during which the committee members ask questions about the student’s papers.
After the oral exam, the committee deliberates and decides whether the student has passed. Passing the oral exam will reflect that the committee judges (on the basis of the submitted work, the student’s performance in the oral exam itself, and overall performance in the programme so far) that the student has sufficiently mastered a suitable range of topics in philosophy to the level that they could teach them to undergraduates, and is advanced enough in their area of specialisation that they will be able to produce a third year paper of sufficient quality to advance to pass the third year defence within one year. Failure to pass the oral exam results in disqualification from continuing in the program.
After passing their oral qualifying exam, a student is required to present once per semester in the graduate seminar. The graduate seminar is a group meeting amongst the graduate students where work-in-progress research is presented. By the end of each semester, students who have passed their oral qualifying exam must submit to the DGS the date(s) they presented their work at the graduate seminar that semester, and the title of the work they presented. Any student who fails to present during a semester will be issued a warning by the DGS. Accumulation of multiple warnings is grounds for dismissal from the program. A waiver for a semester’s presentation requirement may be obtained by petitioning the DGS within one week of the end of the semester. Students are also expected to regularly participate in the graduate seminar to give feedback on other students’ work in progress.
Advancement to candidacy requires a GPA of 3.3 or higher, a pass on the oral qualifying exam, and two or more semesters of working as a TF. When all of these requirements are satisfied, the student advances to candidacy.
Beginning in Spring of year 3 or Monsoon of year 4, students will typically spend one semester per year as a teaching fellow for a Philosophy course or a Foundation Course taught by a faculty member in the Philosophy department. Assignment of teaching fellowships (and the date at which assignments commence) will be determined per a procedure to be instituted at a later date.
The purpose of the third year paper and defense is to develop and evaluate the student’s capacities to conduct research in philosophy that can be published in journals.
The third year paper is a research paper in the format of a journal article. It is due to the student’s Student Research Committee (SRC) before the 10th week of the second semester of the student’s third year.
The student’s SRC schedules a third year paper defense before the beginning of the summer semester after the student’s sixth semester. The defense is a one hour meeting with at least three members of the SRC during which the student discusses their paper. After the defense, the SRC deliberates about whether the student has passed. Failure to pass the third year paper defense results in disqualification from continuing in the program.
Students who have passed the third year paper defense are considered to be in the ABD (all but dissertation) stage and are expected to work on their dissertation until its completion.
The dissertation should be a genuine contribution to the field, demonstrating both comprehensive understanding of the literature in the relevant topic, intellectual progress beyond that literature, and skills in philosophy at a level expected of a full member of the profession. The dissertation may take the form of a closely unified monograph of at least 50,000 words, or 3 papers of a form and level appropriate to leading journals in the subfield, combined with an introduction explaining the connections between these papers and how they form a coherent research project. The form of the dissertation should be appropriate to the subfield and agreed with the advisor well in advance of submission.
The dissertation is examined by two outside members, chosen by the student’s SRC. Outside members can include SRC members. Precise dissertation examination procedures will be specified at a later date.
In addition to the DGS, who serves as an advisor for all students, each graduate student is assigned a provisional advisor upon entry into the program. This advisor helps guide the student’s course enrollment choices and gives other advice as applicable. Students are expected to meet with their provisional advisor before the start of each semester to discuss course choices and their progress in the program. When the student’s SRC is constituted, their provisional advisor is unassigned.
A student’s provisional advisor can be altered with the agreement of the new provisional advisor and the DGS. This can take place at any point upon the request of the student.
The SRC, and especially the chair of the SRC, have the responsibility of guiding the student’s development as a philosopher. The SRC oversees the student’s dissertation process and offers feedback as appropriate.
Each student’s SRC will comprise the advisor (who must be a permanent member of the Philosophy department) who serves as the chair of the committee, the co-advisor (if any), and minimum of 2 additional members. Non-advisor members may be from an institution other than Ashoka or departments other than Philosophy. Ideally the SRC should include one member from an institution other than Ashoka.
A student’s SRC will be constituted by the end of the first semester of the third year. The DGS is responsible for ensuring that each student’s SRC is constituted.
Requests for alterations in the SRC may be submitted by the student or by SRC members. They are submitted to the DGS, unless the DGS is the subject of the proposed alteration, in which case they are submitted to the HoD. All requests by faculty are automatically approved. Requests by students are decided upon within one month.
The purpose of semester evaluations is to give students a sense of how well they are meeting expectations and to give the DGS and the department an overview of how the students are progressing.
By the tenth week of every semester beginning the first semester of their third year, the student submits to their SRC a report of their activities during that semester. Every semester from that one forwards, the chair of the SRC submits an evaluation of the student’s progress to the DGS and to the student. The evaluation should describe the student’s activities during the semester and the degree to which the student’s performance meets expectations. The evaluation is due within three weeks of the end of the semester.
The DGS is a permanent faculty member who is not the HoD. The DGS is responsible for coordinating graduate admissions and graduate student evaluations, for answering questions about the programme, and for overseeing the programme and the graduate curriculum. The position is given to whoever volunteers when there is an opening. If there is more than one volunteer who wishes to serve as DGS, the department votes to decide who will be DGS.
The proseminar is a course done by all Philosophy graduate students in their first semester. Its purpose is to give incoming students an introduction to the department’s members and to strengthen their philosophical skills.
The proseminar is led by the DGS. For each week starting the second week of the semester, another permanent faculty member of the department visits the proseminar to discuss a topic related to their expertise. The readings and any other assignments for each meeting are worked out by the faculty member in consultation with the DGS.
When determining which courses to teach, the department (led by the HoD and the DGS) decide which undergraduate courses will allow for graduate student enrollment.
In undergraduate courses allowing graduate student enrollment, graduate students will be held to different standards which the course instructor will specify. These may include things like extra meetings, extra readings, different assignments, and other altered requirements.
Courses allowing for graduate student enrollment will have 5000-level course codes created. Graduate students enroll in these courses. The exception is PHI-1060, which graduate students may enroll in so that they can fulfill the logic requirement. PHI-1060 does not have different standards for graduate students than it does for undergraduates.
At present, because of the small number of graduate students and the size of the faculty, there are no graduate-only seminar courses. This may be revisited in the future as the department grows in size.
For questions or other information about the Philosophy PhD Programme, contact the Director of Graduate Studies, listed on the Ashoka Philosophy Contact page or email phd.philosophy@ashoka.edu.in.
