Eligibility, requirements and selection for field studies

Eligibility

To be eligible to apply for MFS or KTH Field Studies, you need to:

• be a student in a programme on bachelor's or master's level at KTH
• accomplish a degree project at the bachelor's or master's level.

All programme students at KTH can apply for field studies. If you are a student in a joint programme, such as. EIT, double degree, or dual master, other eligibility requirements may apply to you.

Completed ECTS credits within your programme

In addition to being a programme student and planning to complete your degree project, you must also have completed enough ECTS credits within your KTH programme.

Bachelor's level

If you intend to write your bachelor's degree project abroad, you must have 120 ECTS credits after period 1 of the academic year in which you apply.

Master's level

• If you have studied for your bachelor's at KTH: If you intend to write your master's degree project abroad, you must have 180 ECTS credits from study years 1-3, as well as 60 ECTS credits on master's level up to, and including, study period 1 of the academic year in which you apply.
• If you have studied for your bachelor's at a university other than KTH: Applicants who only study a master's programme at KTH and have taken a bachelor's degree at another university than KTH must have obtained 60 ECTS credits at KTH up to, and including, study period 1 of the academic year you apply.

If you have not completed enough credits according to the eligibility requirements can apply for an exemption from the requirements, which will be assessed by the programme director of your programme. Contact fs-info@kth.se  for further information.

Requirements for field studies

To receive a KTH Field Studies travel grant or MFS scholarship, you must fulfill some requirements regarding the implementation of the field study.

• The field study has to result in a degree project in English at the bachelor's or master's level (15 or 30 ECTS credits). The study can be done by one person or two or more persons together. 
• When applying, you need to have a clear and realistic project idea in the form of a project plan.
• Since the FS project will lead to a degree project, your supervisor or examiner at KTH needs to confirm that the study can lead to a degree project at KTH.
• You must have a contact person in the host country.
• The study needs to be conducted in one of the approved countries (for FS see the OECD DAC list , for MFS see the SIDA list of countries with which Sweden conducts development cooperation (pdf 274 kB) ).
• The stay abroad needs to be at least eight consecutive weeks long, which equals at least 56 days. Your field study stay can be a maximum of 20 weeks long.  
• The project needs to fulfill the degree project requirements within your programme and be related to the Sustainable Development Goals, Agenda 2030, and justice. 
• The field study must be relevant to your program or subject and connect to one or more of Sweden's strategies for development cooperation  in the host country in question (country strategy, regional strategy, or thematic strategy). Your project also needs to be linked to one or more goals within the thematic areas of the strategy in question.

Selection

The eligibility requirements, as well as the requirements for the implementation, need to be fulfilled for you to get a travel grant. You can find more details regarding the assessment of the applications on the page for the Assessment Criteria for KTH Field Studies . Based on the assessments, a selection will be made. 

Possibility of receiving an MFS scholarship

The students whose project applications receive the highest ranking in the selection will be offered the Sida-funded Minor Field Studies scholarship (MFS) instead of the KTH FS, provided that the conditions for MFS are met. KTH has 35 MFS scholarships to distribute for the spring semester 2027, and the MFS scholarship is SEK 25,000 per scholarship. It is not possible to receive both an MFS scholarship and a KTH FS travel grant at the same time.

The purpose of MFS is to, by giving students experience of fieldwork in countries where the Swedish government has decided on strategies for Swedish development cooperation, promote the dissemination of knowledge about international development cooperation within Swedish higher education institutions and to external actors both in Sweden and abroad.

The field study must be relevant to your program or subject and connect to one or more of Sweden's strategies for development cooperation  in the host country in question (country strategy, regional strategy, or thematic strategy). Your project also needs to be linked to one or more goals within the thematic areas of the strategy in question.

The MFS scholarship can be awarded to students with Swedish citizenship or who have been registered in Sweden for at least one year (12 months) at the time of the application, and only to projects in countries that are on the SIDA list of countries with which Sweden conducts development cooperation. 

Countries 2025 (pdf 274 kB)