Call for Contributions to the Doctoral Consortium

We invite PhD students working in the research areas covered by AAMAS to join the Doctoral Consortium (DC) at AAMAS 2027. 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, from Postdocs to professors, according to the student's stage in their studies, 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 peers and senior community members in attendance. The program will conclude with an informal lunch for participating students and mentors, as well as a panel discussion focused on career management questions.

The DC is intended for PhD students who already have a concrete research proposal and preliminary results, but still have sufficient time before completing their dissertation to benefit from the DC experience. Preference will be given to students who meet these criteria, but well-motivated applications from students 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).
• A short paper (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 short paper must be formatted using the official AAMAS 2027 submission format (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/dcs/aamas2027/guidelines-and-policies/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. Students can also propose Postdocs as mentors. 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 short paper (and none of the other components of your application package) will be published in the official AAMAS 2027 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.

Important Dates

All deadlines are at the end of the specified day, anywhere on Earth (UTC-12).

• Submission Opens: October 29, 2026
• Abstract Deadline: December 31, 2026
• Submission Deadline: January 08, 2027
• Author Notification: February 04, 2027
• Camera-Ready Deadline: February 11, 2027

All deadlines are at the end of the specified day, Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12).

Registration Policy

Registration: Please note that you will need to register for the AAMAS main conference (as a student) by the early registration deadline for your short paper to be included in the proceedings. Participation in the DC itself is free (for accepted participants such as yourself); just add the DC add-on during the main conference registration process. Please use the same email address to register for AAMAS as you used in EasyChair for your DC submission. Note that, in case you plan to also attend a workshop or a tutorial on the same day, you need to register and pay for these activities. If you have applied for an AAMAS scholarship, then please wait until you have heard about the outcome of your application and, in case of success, have received special registration instructions from the scholarship chairs.

Questions?

For any questions, please contact the DC chairs directly:

Reuth Mirsky (Tufts University, reuth.mirsky@tufts.edu)

Yali Du (King's College London, yali.du@kcl.ac.uk)