The PhD program in Cognitive Science and Language has been offered by several Catalan universities since the academic year 1988-89. It was initiated by professors of the Universitat de Barcelona, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, who, while working on different fields in Cognitive Science, had the opportunity to interact profitably in different ways, and regarded such interactions important for their successfully pursuing and their particular research interests. In recent years, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya stopped being part of the program, but then the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra were incorporated. Recently the Universitat de Girona has been incorporated also.

The research interests of the professors who have been contributing to the doctorate program focus on various aspects of natural language, on issues such as its computational processing, its psychological and neurological underpinnings, its grammar and its philosophy. Most of them have made in the ensuing years significant contributions to their fields, measured by the usual scientific criteria. The program has already trained a good number of young researchers, who are also beginning to make important contributions to their respective fields, and in some cases have become in their turn professors involved in the program.

The doctorate program has been inviting professors from other univerties, including some of the most prestigious in the different areas of study within Cognitive Science. Among them: Kathleen Akins (Simon Fraser University), José Luis Bermúdez (Stirling University), Ned Block (New York University), Susan Carey (Harvard University), Michael Kenstowicz (MIT), David Chalmers (Arizona), Gennaro Chierchia (Milano), Martin Davies (Australian National University), Almerindo Ojeda (U.C. Davis), Brenda Rapp (John Hopkins), Sabine Iatridou (MIT), Ernesto Sosa (Brown University), Adèle Mercier (Queen's University), and Andrea Moro (University San Raffaele in Milan).

This enlarged teaching program has so far been made possible by financial support coming from the grants for "Quality" doctorate programs of the Spanish Government Ministry of Education, which the program has been receiving without interruption since they were first offered in 1995, and from the Catalan Government.