DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

Call for Contributions to the Doctoral Consortium

We invite PhD students working in the research areas covered by AAMAS to take part in the Doctoral Consortium (DC) of AAMAS 2026. The DC is an opportunity to interact closely with established researchers in your field as well as other PhD students to receive feedback on your work and to get advice on managing your career.

Each student accepted to the DC will be matched with an established researcher from the AAMAS community who will act as the student’s mentor. The mentor will interact closely with the student, provide feedback on research and career management questions, and help foster new contacts. Each accepted student will also have the opportunity to present their work to their peers and senior members of the community attending. The program will be completed with an informal lunch for participating students and mentors as well as a panel discussion focusing on questions of career management.

The DC is specifically intended for PhD students who already have a concrete research proposal and preliminary results, but who still have sufficient time before the completion of their dissertation so as to be able to benefit from the DC experience. Preference will be given to students satisfying these criteria, but well-motivated applications from students who are at earlier or later stages of their doctoral studies will also be considered.

Submission

1. Application package: A complete application package to the DC should be submitted as a single PDF and should have the following components (in this order):

Cover page (1 page), with the following information: name, university, homepage, preferred personal pronouns, citizenship, PhD start date, expected graduation date, and name(s) of PhD supervisor(s).
Extended abstract (2 pages + 1 page of references) motivating and describing your PhD topic and outlining some of the results obtained so far as well as your plans for continuing the work.
The extended abstract must be formatted using the official AAMAS 2026 submission format (https://cyprusconferences.org/aamas2026/submission-instructions/), including abstract and keywords. Look at the proceedings of past editions of AAMAS for inspiration for how to write such a document.
Personal statement (1 page) with citations and brief discussions of up to five papers that have inspired your own research.
Curriculum vitae (at most 2 pages), including your list of publications.

2. Letter of support: A 1-page letter (PDF) by your supervisor (signed and on official letterhead), in which they confirm that they support your application to the DC and explain why they believe that this is the right moment for you to attend the DC. A detailed letter of recommendation is neither required nor expected.

3. Mentor suggestions: The names and affiliations of three or more individuals you would hope might get assigned to you as a mentor during the DC. These should be established members of the AAMAS research community who would typically attend the conference. For inspiration, look at the listings of PC and SPC members of recent editions of the conference and ask your supervisor for advice.

If your application is accepted, your extended abstract (and none of the other components of your application package) will be published in the official AAMAS 2026 conference proceedings.

Doctoral Consortium: Submission

Note that you will need to register an abstract (outlining your research topic in a few lines) several days before the final submission deadline. You can update your submission as often as you like before that final deadline, and you are advised to make use of this opportunity.

If your application is accepted, you must attend the DC at the conference.

You are welcome to also apply for a scholarship, but please note that this is a separate process. While acceptance to the DC may play a role in scholarship decisions, those decisions are made by the scholarship chairs and are subject to available funding.