Current PhD studentships

Please note that applications for academic year 2024/25 is now open – closing date 31st January 2024.

Based in Milton Keynes, UK

Each year, the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) offers full-time funded PhD studentships for an October start.

Funding is available for UK, EU and international students. Fully-funded PhD studentships will include fees and maintenance for three years, depending on satisfactory progress. Anticipated stipend for 2024/2025 is approximately £18,622 per annum.

Faculty studentships for 2024 will be prioritised for doctoral research proposals based, but not exclusively, on one of the following research projects.

Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport

• Anti-racist coaching practice in sport
• Contemporary youth cultures and transitions (CYCat)
• Empowering teachers: TPD@Scale
• Multiple and multi-dimensional life transitions of transplant athletes
• New collaborations to improve children's learning and wellbeing
• Strength and conditioning for golf
• Student teachers as readers (STaRs)
• The embodied experience of motorcycling
• The role of an informed strength & conditioning programme on injury prevention in tennis
• What 'next' for adolescent girls on an alternative education pathway in Zimbabwe?

Educational and Learning Technology

• Learning Design, learning analytics, and artificial intelligence
• Open Educational PRactices for AIED (OEPRA)

Health, Wellbeing, Social Work and Social Care

• Abortion stigma and the workplace
• Adapting the home for health, care and wellbeing: the home adaptation experiences and requirements of older people from minority ethnic communities in the United Kingdom
• Bereavement in Higher Education Institutes
• Co-producing a roadmap towards democratic involvement through social inclusion and empowerment for people with learning disabilities/autism and mental health patients
• Digital transformation and its impact in a cashless society on marginalised communities
• Engaging South Asian young adult carers not in contact with health & social care services
• Evaluating co-production tools for registrants/patients/public in collaborative consultations
• Existential dis/connections
• Identifying the education and support needs of newly qualified nurses to improve workforce retention rates
• Improving shared decision-making for underserved populations who are at risk of, or are living with, cardiovascular diseases
• Improving the information (readability, content, accessibility, usability) presented by the General Osteopathic Council for the public about the regulation of osteopaths to support public trust and engagement
• Influences on contraceptive decision-making
• Study of trust in regulation and regulatory processes and functions (including education, standards, continuing professional development and Fitness to Practise) with patients and/ or with registrants
• Understanding end-of-life doula provision

Languages and Applied Linguistics 

• Discourse Studies
• Eyetracking for language teacher development
• MSEA: Multilingualism, sustainability, and education in Amazonia

Closing date for applications (including for self-funded study): 31st January 2024.

We anticipate interviews will take place in early March 2024.

The Open University is offering full and part-time PhD studentships in health and wellbeing and innovation in learning, funded in collaboration with the ESRC funded Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership.

Health and wellbeing pathway

Achieving good health and supporting wellbeing for all is essential to achieving social justice, and this lies at the heart of the Open University’s mission. We are keen to attract students to work with us on research that locates the experiences of service users, ‘patients’, carers, family members and practitioners at the fore of inquiry.

We place value on participatory and inclusive research particularly with individuals that are marginalised, ‘hard to reach’ or have complex needs. We also have research expertise in population-level research. Our research draws on various methodologies and forms of analysis and much is based on multidisciplinary work across the social sciences, in particular drawing on medical sociology, critical psychology, public health, anthropology and other critical, applied social sciences.

Applications are invited on one or more of the following themes:

• age, ageing and later life
• children, young people, parenting and families
• death, dying and bereavement
• disability and long-term conditions
• reproductive and sexual health
• care and caring
• mental health

For more information on the application process see The Open University MPhil and PhD Application Process website.
To inquire about these studentships, please email Justin Rogers.

Closing date – 12.00 pm on 11 January 2024 . Interviews will be held in early February 2024.

Innovation in Learning Pathway

This pathway is dedicated to supporting research into innovative approaches to learning, teaching and assessment. Innovation in Learning welcomes and encourages research into novel and imaginative approaches to learning, teaching and assessment. Our focus is on the use of digital technology to support openness and inclusion in education. We are especially interested in work that explores the interface between formal and informal learning.

Specific areas of interest include:

• technology-enhanced learning (learning analytics, innovation, openness)
• technologies for inclusion (assistive technology use by disabled learners)
• child-led research (e.g. digital storytelling) creativity and technology use
• online intercultural and language exchange
• technologies for social and global justice life histories: technology, learning disability and the ‘good life’
• what (and how) children learn about food from the digital media
• how translators use digital tools
• using digital tools for international development
• MOOCs for the continuing professional development of teachers
• using eye-tracking to research language learning and teaching

For more information on the application process see The Open University MPhil and PhD Application Process website.
To inquire about these studentships, please email Margaret Ebubedike.

Closing date – 12.00 pm on 11 January 2024 . Interviews will be held in early February 2024.

AHRC Funded Open Oxford Cambridge Studentships

If you would like to find more about the studentships, please refer to the Open Oxford Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnerships.

AHRC Funded Studentship Museum of the Home

• Study of trust in regulation and regulatory processes and functions (including education, standards, continuing professional development and Fitness to Practise) with patients and/ or with registrants.
• Improving the information (readability, content, accessibility, usability) presented by the General Osteopathic Council for the public about the regulation of osteopaths to support public trust and engagement.
• Evaluating co production tools for registrants/patients/public in collaborative consultations.