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KTH and Minor Field Studies - Travel grant for degree projects in low- and middle-income countries

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

Info session 7 April on KTH and Minor Field Studies:

Do you want to know more about what it means to conduct field studies in low- or middle-income countries and how to proceed? Don't miss the info session on 7 April.

Registration is mandatory. KTH will provide a light lunch.

Learn more and register before 2 April

KTH Field Studies (KTH FS) is a KTH-funded travel grant and Minor Field Studies (MFS) is a Sida funded scholarship that gives you, as a KTH student, the opportunity to carry through your degree project at the bachelor's or master's level in a low- or middle-income country. Through this opportunity, you can increase your knowledge, understanding, and experience of challenges and environments in low- and middle-income countries. The field studies have to result in a degree project in English at the bachelor's or master's level (15 or 30 ECTS credits). The stay abroad needs to be at least eight consecutive weeks. The amount of the KTH Field Studies travel grant is currently 22,000 SEK per person. The amount for the Minor Field Studies scholarship is currently 35,000 SEK per person. For the spring semester 2026, we have 25 MFS scholarships and 25 KTH Field Studies travel grants to distribute. 

An FS study is characterized by a connection to the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030 . FS prepares you as a student to work in a global context and to strengthen your knowledge about the Sustainable Development Goals. The project must be linked to at least one of the 17 global goals for sustainable development and Agenda 2030.

FS is a way to partly finance your field studies abroad. Please note however that you can write your degree project abroad also without the FS travel grant or MFS scholarship.

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

Step-by-step guide for KTH Field Studies

What is a low- or middle-income country?

Countries that are on the OECD's DAC list  of countries that receive development aid are counted in this context as low- and middle-income countries that you can go to within the framework of KTH FS.

For MFS, see the SIDA list of countries with which Sweden conducts development cooperation (pdf 274 kB) .

Eligibility

To be eligible for the FS travel grant, 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

You also need to have a sufficient amount of completed credits within your programme:

  • 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 to KTH Field Studies.
  • 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 45 ECTS credits on the advanced level after period 1 of the academic year in which you apply to KTH Field Studies.
  • Applicants who only study a master's program at KTH and have taken a bachelor's degree at another university than KTH must have obtained 45 credits in completed courses at KTH up to, and including, study period 1 of the academic year you apply to KTH FS.

All program students at KTH can apply for Field Studies. If you are a student in a collaborative program, e.g. EIT, Double Degree, or Dual Master, other eligibility requirements may apply to you. Contact fs-info@kth.se  if you have questions about eligibility requirements for Field Studies.

Application

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.
  • 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.

Selection

Based on the applications, a selection will be made where your suitability will be assessed, as well as your project's relevance to the Sustainable Development Goals and the project's feasibility. 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 . 

Possibility of receiving an MFS scholarship

KTH has 25 MFS scholarships to distribute for the spring semester of 2026. The students whose project applications receive the highest ranking during the selection will be offered a Minor Field Studies (MFS) scholarship (if all the MFS requirements are met). MFS scholarships are financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and the MFS scholarship is SEK 35,000. It is not possible to receive both an MFS scholarship and a KTH FS travel grant at the same time. 

MFS scholarships 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)

Project

You can find a project in various ways, for example, through your supervisor or examiner at KTH or through your contacts. A few project ideas may be published on this website. 

KTH has regional advisors you can contact for assistance with eventual contacts and projects. To contact the regional advisors, or if you have general questions about KTH Field Studies, email fs-info@kth.se . State at which programme you are studying, what you want to write your degree project about, and which country/region(s) you are interested in.