About this role
As a research-intensive university, we’re of one of the UK’s top 30 universities for research quality TheCompleteUniversityGuide.co.uk. We encourage innovation and rising talent, enabling established and emerging research leaders to achieve excellence and respond to new opportunities.
Royal Holloway leads and is in partnership with a number of Doctoral Training Partnerships and Doctoral Landscape Awards (AHRC DLA, AHRC Techne, ESRC SEDarc, BBSRC LIDo, NERC Aries, NERC TREES) as well as Centres for Doctoral Training (EPSRC AI and Digital inclusion, EPSRC Cybersecurity for the everyday). We have an excellent Researcher Development programme, and wider institutional postgraduate training. We are committed to supporting a strong and growing PGR community, including PGR-Led activities (including “The Other Kind of Doctor” podcast and blog), annual conference, and opportunities to connect and engage with PGRs outside your main discipline.
Details of the Award
Funding is available for 3 full-time (or part-time) UK-rate tuition fees and UKRI-rate stipend (for 2025/26 academic year this is £22,780, including London Allowance) for 3.5 years including a 3-month placement for career enhancing research activity.
A limited number of awards (30%) are available for international students Applicants must be available to start 21 September 2026
Before applying
Applicants should visit https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studying-here/ to find out more about applying for a PhD programme at RHUL within their field of interest. You may also wish to explore department specific webpages to find out more. Applicants must identify a supervisor and get in touch with them directly before preparing an application for submission. You should have an agreement from your proposed supervision team that they will support your application. You may submit your own proposal or can select and develop a project proposed by a potential supervisor. The following proposal ideas have been suggested by supervisors actively seeking PhD students; if you are interested in one of these, please get in touch with the project supervisor directly. To view potential projects, please visit our webpage here. Prepare your application following the Applicant information guidance document, available on the our webpage here.
The timetable for the competition is as follows:
Monday 12 January 2026, 12pm GMT - Deadline for applications on Royal Holloway Applicant Portal
Monday 2 March 2026 - Applicants notified of outcome
Monday 21 September 2026 - Student’s start date
If you have questions about opportunities within Schools, contact the relevant Director of Postgraduate Research Education:
School of Humanities
Professor Andrew Jotischky
School of Life & Environment Sciences
Dr Rebecca Fisher
School of Law & Social Sciences
Professor Emily Glorney
School of Performing and Digital Arts
Professor Tina K. Ramnarine
Royal Holloway is committed to supporting students from all backgrounds to access our programmes. To help address any questions about doctoral study and the applications process for the Doctoral Landscape Awards we are hosting an information event for interested applicants on Wednesday 12 November at 5pm. Register your attendance here.