Please find below the message our Ph.D. coordinator, Professor Giampaolo Manfrida, received from dottorato@unifi.it.
"[..] The information we are referring to here has already been shared with the Universities of Pisa and Siena and with the Tuscany Region concerning Pegaso doctoral candidates; it has also been reported to the Ph.D. candidates' representatives.
Since the University is not able to provide, as requested by the Ph. D. students, a UNIVOCAL instruction on the matter, due to the variety of cases that may occur, three ways of managing the foreign period during the Covid-19 Pandemic were identified:
- The doctoral student regularly carries out the stay abroad, where possible, after receiving approval from the tutor, the coordinator, and the head of the interested department; in this case, she/he will receive the grant increase (50%).
- If it is impossible to carry out a regular stay abroad, continuous forms of distance collaboration with the foreign University of reference may be considered; the tutor and the coordinator will recognize these activities as equivalent to a stay abroad. The doctoral student will not receive a grant increase.
- If the previous conditions cannot be met, the Rector will sign a decree allowing an exception to the stay abroad, as done for the 33rd cycle. This decree will be authorized only for Ph.D. candidates whose stay abroad is mandatory (ungraduated without it) and signed at the end of the doctoral year (not before).
Translated by Marco Bicchi and Stella Grazia Tomasello, Ph.D. students' representatives in the Department Council.