PhD or postdoc in Europe: choosing your university city and finding a place to live

Published 2026-10-25

Applications for doctoral and postdoctoral positions are written around a project, a supervisor and a research group. The decision people remember afterwards, though, is often the city: whether the stipend covered the rent, whether a partner could find work, whether three or four years there felt like living or merely staying. For researchers working on Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the choice is wider than ever, from long-established centres in Western Europe to fast-growing universities in the region itself. Here is a practical way to weigh it.

Start from the money, adjusted for the city

A stipend or salary means little until it is set against local costs. European funders already think this way. The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the EU's main programme for researcher mobility, pay postdoctoral fellows a living allowance that is multiplied by a country correction coefficient, plus a mobility allowance and, where relevant, a family allowance; the exact rates are set in each work programme. The same allowance therefore buys very different lives in Copenhagen, Ljubljana or Sofia, and the coefficient only partly closes the gap, because it is set per country while rents vary most between cities.

Do the same calculation for any offer: take the net monthly amount, subtract a realistic rent for a room or a one-bedroom flat in the city (not the national average), and see what is left for everything else. Ask the group's current doctoral students what they actually pay; they are the most reliable source you have.

Rents have moved fastest where many researchers now look

Across the EU, rents rose by 27.8% between 2010 and the first quarter of 2025, while house prices rose by 57.9%, according to Eurostat. The averages hide large differences, and several of the steepest increases are in the region this site covers: rents more than tripled in Estonia (+220%) and rose by 184% in Lithuania and 124% in Hungary over the same period. Salaries in research have not always kept pace. A city that looked cheap when a senior colleague did their PhD there may no longer be, and capital cities usually diverge from the rest of their country.

Weigh the city on more than the lab

Once the budget works, the other criteria are personal, and it helps to write them down before comparing offers. The ones researchers most often regret overlooking are:

Size and pace: a large capital with archives, embassies and conferences, or a university town where everything is within cycling distance;
Language: whether daily life, administration and a partner's job search are possible in English, and whether you want to learn the local language for your research anyway;
Connections: direct trains and flights to the places your fieldwork and family require;
Climate and light: four northern winters are a real consideration for some people;
Cost and space: whether the stipend buys a room in a shared flat or a place of your own.

Scoring two or three candidate cities against your own list, rather than against rankings built for other people, makes trade-offs visible: a slightly lower stipend in a city that fits on every other count can be the better offer.

Residence rights: the EU rules for researchers

For researchers from outside the EU, Directive (EU) 2016/801 sets common rules on entry and residence. Admission is based on a hosting agreement with a research organisation, and the directive makes moving within the EU during a project easier. It also gives researchers the right, once their research is finished, to stay in the Member State that issued the permit for at least nine months to look for work or set up a business. National procedures and processing times still differ, so start the permit application as soon as the hosting agreement is signed, and plan housing around the date the permit is likely to arrive.

Finding a place before you arrive

Use the institution first. Many universities keep rooms or guest flats for incoming doctoral students and researchers, especially for the first months; international offices often know trusted landlords.
Use EURAXESS. The European Commission's EURAXESS initiative runs a free jobs and funding portal and a network of service centres in around forty European countries that help researchers and their families with accommodation, visas and work permits, social security, healthcare, schools and language courses.
Book a short first stay. A furnished room or guest flat for the first one or two months lets you view long-term rentals in person, learn which neighbourhoods suit you, and avoid paying a deposit for a flat you have never seen.
Prepare a tenant file. Landlords in tight markets choose quickly. Have your contract or hosting agreement, proof of the stipend or salary, identification and, if possible, a reference ready in a single PDF.
Know the local rules. Deposits, notice periods and registration duties differ from country to country. National housing information services and the EURAXESS centre in your host country can tell you what is normal, which is the best protection against scams aimed at newcomers.

A note for area-studies researchers

For those working on Central-Eastern Europe and the Balkans, location also shapes the research itself: access to archives and libraries, language immersion, and the chance to join regional networks. Long-running programmes such as the master's in East European and Eurasian studies at the University of Bologna's Forlì campus (see MIREES then and now) show how much a well-connected base matters, and regional bodies such as the Central European Initiative have long supported academic mobility across the region.