PhD Courses in Denmark

Dates and time: 3 + 16 February and 2 March 2026 from 9:00 to 16:00 + a 15-minute individual consultation on 23 February 2026.

A four-week course for PhD scholars (especially Humanities, Social Sciences, Theology, Law) who wish to improve their performance as academic communicators at inter/national conferences: group workshops, individual consultation and individual study.

Please reserve the two weeks before the first workshop to study with the help of two guides in order to learn about selected presentation techniques and prepare the draft abstract, slide show and presentation for the course.

Workshop 1: (Re)writing Conference Abstracts and Proposals
As an academic communicator, you need linguistic precision and flexibility to summarize the wealth of your research in a short text. The guide you can access two weeks before the course introduces you to various rhetorical strategies and language tips that help you draft your conference abstracts effectively. You can also consult additional materials that assist you in adjusting conference papers/scripts for spoken delivery and editing your slides. During the group workshop you discuss selected tasks from the guide and work with your assigned peer on the review of each other’s drafts. The tutor is at hand to answer your queries.

Workshop 2: Presenting in English
As an academic speaker, you need not only to stand up, but also to stand out. With the help of the guide available two weeks before the course, you prepare a short conference presentation (max. 5 minutes). You practise memorable delivery, receive constructive feedback from your audience and comment on your peers’ performance. Your presentation is recorded so that you can review your delivery during the individual consultation with the tutor. To create a more intimate atmosphere, the participants are divided into two groups: you attend either the morning or the afternoon session. When you are not in the workshop, you have time to revise your conference materials.

Individual Consultation on Recorded Presentations
You schedule a 15-minute consultation with your tutor to discuss your delivery. You review the recording from Workshop 2 to reflect on your current and future presentation techniques. This feedback helps you revise your presentation for Workshop 3.

Workshop 3: Conference Presentations Revisited
To test your improvements, you deliver a revised version of your presentation (max. 10 minutes). You receive constructive feedback from your audience and comment on your peers’ performance. Again, you are divided into two groups: you attend either the morning or the afternoon session.

Schedule: The course runs for four weeks. The group workshops last from 9:15 to 15:00 (6 x 45 minutes). In Workshops 2 and 3 you attend either the morning or the afternoon session. Between these workshops you book one 15-minute individual consultation with the tutor.

Course dates:
Tuesday 3 February 2026: Workshop 1: (Re)Writing Conference Abstracts
Monday 16 February 2026: Workshop 2: Presenting in English
Monday 23 February 2026: Individual Consultation on Recorded Presentations
Tuesday 2 March 2026: Workshop 3: Conference Presentations Revisited

Course tutors:

Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese (Ph.D. in Cognitive Linguistics; M.A. in American Literature); Fulbright scholar; former co-editor of the international peer-reviewed journal Przekładaniec: A Journal of Translation Studies and contributing editor at Poetry Wales (thirty years of editing experience); public communicator, programme curator, workshop facilitator, academic writer, literary translator, anthologist, guest editor and poet; accredited coach in writing process and creativity. Email: ewl@hum.ku.dk

Sophie Swerts Knudsen (MA in Translation Studies and Applied Linguistics in English, Dutch and Italian); lecturer in ECTS-accredited courses for MA and BA students on Presentation Techniques and Communication Skills (twenty years of experience at CBS, KU and in private teaching); developer of KU workshops on ‘Speaking in Public’ and ‘How to Retain Student Attention’; member of the TOEPAS rating team (Test of Oral English Proficiency for Academic Staff); regular presenter at academic conferences; award-winning author. Email: swerts@hum.ku.dk

Preparation: Over the two weeks before the course starts, you are asked to work with two compendia: Delivering Presentations and Writing Conference Abstracts. As part of this preparation, you need to collect a mini-anthology of ten conference abstracts in your field to analyze them with the help of the compendium. Through the assigned tasks, you will become more familiar with selected rhetorical strategies, in this way helping yourself prepare your conference abstract, slides and presentation. You should have a draft of your conference abstract ready for the peer review in Workshop 1 and your slides as well as short presentation ready for delivering in Workshop 2.

The invitation to join the course room on Absalon to access the course guides and materials sent on: 20 January 2026.

​Language: English

ECTS: 2.5 ECTS.

Max. number of PhD students: 20

Registration: Please register via the link in the box no later than 8 January 2026

Admission and course fee: This course is one of 3 courses organised by Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use (CIP) and offered by the PhD schools at Faculty of Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, and Theology at University of Copenhagen. If the course is oversubscribed, PhD students enrolled at one of the four PhD schools will thus be admitted to the course on a first-come, first-served basis. PhD students from other PhD schools will be put on a waiting list and may be admitted to the course a few weeks before course start if places are available. The course is free of charge for PhD students enrolled at University of Copenhagen. Other PhD students will be charged a course fee of DKK 1,200 per ECTS.

Further information: For more information about the PhD course, please contact the PhD Administration (phd@hrsc.ku.dk) or the course organisers.