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Field studies in a low- or middle-income country

Get a travel grant to conduct your degree project in a low- and middle-income country in, for example, Latin America, Africa, or Asia, through Minor Field Studies or KTH Field Studies. This is an excellent opportunity for you who want to work with projects that can make a clear difference to communities worldwide.

Info session 20 April, at 12.15 in room F2

Do you want to do your degree project work at a bachelor's or master's level a field study in a low- or middle-income country next study year?

Then don't miss this information meeting, where you will learn about what it means, how to find a project and a host organisation, and how to apply.

Learn more and participate

About field studies

As a KTH student, you have the opportunity to carry out your degree project, at bachelor’s or master’s level, as a field study in a low- or middle-income country. A field study is a good way to prepare yourself to work in a global context. By conducting a field study, you can put your knowledge to concrete use while gaining an understanding of and experience with the challenges and environments in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

Through KTH, you can apply for one of the following two scholarships:

  • Minor Field Studies (MFS), which is a scholarship funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
  • KTH Field Studies (KTH FS), which is a KTH-funded travel grant.

To be eligible for the scholarships, your study abroad must result in a degree project at the bachelor's or master's level, in the form of a report in English, totalling 15 to 30 ECTS. The stay abroad must last at least eight consecutive weeks. Your field study in a low- or middle-income country must be linked to at least one of the UN's 17 global goals for sustainable development and the 2030 Agenda.

The Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030 (sdgs.un.org)

The MFS and KTH FS scholarships help you to partially finance your field studies abroad, but please note that you can write your thesis abroad even if you are not awarded the scholarships.

Do you have questions about FS? Send an email to fs-info@kth.se .

Application

You will find the application on this page when the application is open.

The application is usually open once every year, from mid-September until mid-October. The application is made in the application system Mobility-Online in several steps. In the first part, you need to fill in a form with personal details and contact information and answer questions about your project.

When you have submitted the first application form, you will receive an email from Mobility-Online asking you to register via the link in the email and upload the following documents:

  • A portrait photo.
  • A copy of your passport.
  • A project description in English, including a preliminary budget. Find more information on Template for project plan, Field Studies .
  • A certificate from your supervisor or examiner at KTH regarding the project's adequacy for your degree project.
  • A certificate from the contact person in the host country, preferably directed to KTH, showing that you are welcome to conduct your field studies in the host country.
  • If you are not a Swedish citizen, you need to upload an extract of the population register (Utdrag om folkbokföringsuppgifter), showing when your move to Sweden was registered.
  • Other relevant certificates, such as language certificates (for languages other than Swedish and English), certificates regarding previous development studies, etc. 

If you apply together with someone else, you must each submit an application, but the project plan, etc. can of course be the same. In the application, if you are applying with someone else, you also need to enter the name of the person(s) you are applying with.

Once you have started with your application in Mobility-Online, you can work on it until the application deadline. A complete application, including the required documents, needs to be uploaded to the application before the application deadline.

Articles with KTH students on field studies

KTH Field Studies students won a prize for the best thesis in their subject

An idea that started with a newly purchased shirt led master's students Sean Meyer and Shimanto Goswami to a field study on the recycling of textiles in Bangladesh connected to the global fast-fashion...

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Filip Borgström David Sigge and an employee at the coffee farm
Filip Borgström (center) and David Sigge (right) together with coffee farmer Aphiwat Sukphong's employee.

Student field study: how coffee beans can lift farmers out of poverty

KTH students David Sigge and Filip Borgström spent two months in Thailand as part of their degree project in industrial economics. They looked at if and how farmers could increase their income in a su...

Read the article