The EC2U PhD Agreements Tool provides Large Language Model (LLM) based textual analysis supporting PhD coordinators and other relevant stakeholders of the EC2U European University Alliance in drafting cotutelle PhD agreements, that is jointly supervised doctoral programmes where a candidate is enrolled at two universities under a shared agreement.
The tool is implemented as a macro for the EC2U Confluence wiki platform, embedding AI-assisted analysis directly into the collaborative editing environment already in use within the alliance for drafting legal documents and sharing knowledge.
What is a Cotutelle?
A cotutelle is a PhD programme where a research candidate is jointly enrolled at two universities and spends time at each institution. The programme conditions are detailed in a joint agreement that must comply with local policies and national regulations for both universities.
Drafting these agreements has traditionally been slow, cumbersome, and error-prone due to:
- Complex regulatory landscape - agreements must comply with policies at multiple levels (national, institutional, department) from both partner universities
- Multilingual requirements - policies may be written in different languages with implied local context
- Conflicting constraints - requirements from different institutions may conflict, requiring careful resolution
- Limited staff capacity - PhD coordinators have limited time while facing pressure to increase cotutelle agreements
- Consistency concerns - maintaining editorial standards and shared frameworks across the alliance
Capabilities
- Compatibility analysis - analyse existing agreements against relevant regulations from both partner universities
- Automatic translations - translate agreement documents and regulations across partner university languages
- Fact-checking support - summarise root issues and generate references to relevant document sections when highlighting conflicts
- Issue detection - identify potential conflicts, missing requirements, and compliance concerns
- Progress tracking - classify, prioritise, and track issues through resolution workflows
Benefits
- Reduced staff effort - automates time-consuming cross-checking, draft generation, and fact-checking tasks
- Reduced delivery times - streamlines drafting through consistent suggestions, early conflict identification, and translation support
- Improved compliance - analyses current regulations with conflict highlights and legal references
- Improved consistency - guides users towards standardised formats and shared editorial standards across the alliance
Getting Started
- Confluence administrators — see the Setup Guide to install and configure the macro
- PhD coordinators and drafters — see the User Manual to start drafting agreements
Support
The project is hosted on GitHub and developed collaboratively under an open-source process. Contributions, feedback, and suggestions from the community are welcome.
- Open an issue on GitHub to report a problem or to suggest a new feature
- Start a discussion on GitHub to ask a how-to question or to share an idea
License
This project is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License – see LICENSE file for details.
Acknowledgements
Development of the EC2U PhD Agreements Tool is funded by the European Commission under the EC2U project.