Top PhD Programs in London United Kingdom 2019/2020

A pluralistic programme offering existential, phenomenological, cognitive-behavioral, and psychodynamic approaches, with a strong focus on employability.

*For more information please refer to the fees and financial support sections below.

The DPsych programme aims to develop highly skilled, reflexive practitioner psychologists and researchers who will make a valuable contribution to the profession, both inside and outside the consulting room.... [-]

Do you seek to make a unique contribution to our understanding of organizations and communities, and of the dynamics of stability and change? Are you an experienced and reflective practitioner interested in developing yourself and your practice, through the discipline of 'Action Inquiry'? Are you interested in doing your research in close collaboration with the support of a community of like-minded practitioners?

If yes, then the Ashridge Doctorate in Organisational Change will be of interest to you. Through a rigorous process of inquiry, this qualification will develop your practice to a deeper level. As organizations face the need to respond to ever more diverse and challenging issues, practitioners must develop new ways of working with complex and uncertain situations in pursuit of purposes and outcomes that matter to them.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

The MPhil/PhD in Development, Environment and Policy provides advanced training and research experience at a doctoral level in the areas at the intersection of development, environment and policy. The programme is particularly focused on the following:

A key feature of the programme is an emphasis on interdisciplinarity – our students are encouraged to blend concepts, tools and methods from across disciplines, eg. economics and nutrition; politics and geography. This is enhanced by our location in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, with its mission to strengthen interdisciplinarity within SOAS. Our students also benefit from CeDEP’s strong links with other Bloomsbury colleges of the University of London such as the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and cross-college institutions such as the London International Development Centre (LIDC) and the London Centre for Integrative Research in Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH).... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

The PhD in Development Economics is a research degree offered by the Department of Economics, and is also part of the PhD pathway, 'International Development', within the Bloomsbury Doctoral Training Partnership. The latter forms one of the few Centres recognised by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), thereby receiving financial support, and especially individual grants, for MSc and PhD students. This PhD pathway is open to applicants whether or not eligible for, or in receipt of, ESRC funding, with ESRC-funded students expected to form a small minority overall. Successful applicants to the MPhil/PhD in Development Economics will normally have a good Master's degree in a relevant subject if entering directly into the MPhil/PhD pathway although each applicant is assessed on merits including work and other experience.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-timeThe SOAS Religions and Philosophies Department offers a vibrant, stimulating, and interdisciplinary research environment. We provide individual research supervision in a wide variety of religious traditions and comparative and interdisciplinary topics. Supervisors are experts in their fields and thoroughly familiar with the religions, cultures, languages, and geographical areas they specialise in.

In addition to individual supervision the Department offers research training at various levels: an obligatory research writing workshop which prepares year 1 MPhil students for their upgrade to the PhD level; a weekly seminar for PhD students in years 2 and 3 to discuss work in progress and receive feedback before submitting their thesis; a departmental research seminar in which both staff and students present papers on their research projects and discuss them in an interdisciplinary setting. Students also have the opportunity to attend seminars, lectures, and conferences offered by the various specialist Centres relating to their particular fields. These centres run regular evening lecture series, workshops, and conferences which host visiting speakers from other universities in Britain, Europe, and globally.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-timeThe Department offers the widest coverage in Europe of research and teaching related to the languages and cultures of the principal countries of South East Asia. Its primary commitment is to the four languages Burmese, Indonesian/Malay, Thai and Vietnamese, and their pieces of literature, cinemas and associated cultures. REF 2014 submissions by members of the Department included significant and paradigm-shifting monographs, edited collections, journal articles and book chapters in cinema and gender, literary criticism, cultural history and postcolonial studies. It is a flourishing and friendly Department with close links to recent alumni.

The research interests of the Department’s members include classical Malay literature; modern literature in Malay, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese; Islam in South East Asia; language pedagogy; phonetics; gender studies; oral literature and folklore; cinema in South East Asia; and translation. These interests are increasingly reflected in the kind of work that is undertaken by the Department’s current doctoral researchers.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-timeSOAS has an international reputation for excellence in the field of South Asian studies earned by the world-leading research undertaken. REF 2014 submissions by members of the Department included significant and paradigm-shifting monographs, edited collections, journal articles and book chapters on literature, cinema cultural history and postcolonial studies. The Department has two ERC grants: Francesca Orsini for the comparative study of the multilingual literary histories of North India, the Maghreb, and the Horn of Africa; while James Mallinson has one entitled “The Hatha Yoga Project: Mapping traditions of transnational physical yoga practice through philology and ethnography”. Amina Yaqin’s current research projects include a collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Pakistan and the University of East London for the ‘Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue’ research project funded by the RCUK. This follows on from an earlier AHRC funded international research network, ‘Framing Muslims’. Rachel Dwyer is CI on an AHRC funded International Network with the University of Leeds: Soft Power, Cinema and the BRICS.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

The Department of Politics and International Studies accepts students for research work leading to a PhD. The primary aim of the PhD programme is to train students to design, research and write a successful doctoral thesis. Those who have completed the doctorate will be familiar with the conceptual and methodological aspects of political research and qualified as experts in their field.

To be considered for entry into the PhD programme, applicants must possess a good advanced degree in Politics equivalent in level and content to the Department's MSc, although applications from individuals with related degrees in cognate disciplines will also be considered. Guidelines for Research Proposals can be found here.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

All students register in year 1 of the programme as MPhil students. The upgrade from MPhil to PhD takes place at the end of the first academic session for full-time students (or at the end of the second academic session for part-time students).

All new MPhil/PhD students are provided with a supervisory committee of three members, comprising a main or primary supervisor, and a second and third supervisor. The split in time commitment across the supervisory committee is 60:25:15. In the first year, students are expected to meet their main supervisor on a bi-weekly basis for a period of at least one hour.

The student’s primary supervisor is always a member of the Department in which the student is registered. The second and third supervisors, who act in a supplementary advisory capacity, may be from the same Department, or other Departments/Centres in the Faculty of Languages and Cultures or in Departments/Centres in the other Faculties of the School.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

Staff and students of the Department of Music pursue research on a wide range of subjects, mainly but not exclusively focused on the music of Asia and Africa. Staff have special interests in the music of China and Central Asia (Harris), Korea (Howard), Japan, Indonesia and Thailand (Gray), India and Nepal (Widdess), the Islamic Middle East (Wright), the Jewish world (Wood), West Africa and Cuba (Durán) and South and East Africa (Impey). But research is not limited to these areas: projects have been undertaken on American jazz, and on the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Eastern European music, for example. Staff often have research interests in issues that cross regional boundaries; see the Department Staff page for a summary of their interests, and select the name of a lecturer for further details of their individual research specialisms and activities.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

Media and Film Studies at SOAS has an expanding programme of doctoral research with some thirty research students currently enrolled. Our research students work on an exceptionally wide range of topics, both theoretical and empirical, with about half coming from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and half from Europe and North America.

The Centre puts emphasis on the acquisition of critical theoretical skills and in-depth regional, linguistic and cultural knowledge of media and film forms and practices.

The PhD in Media and Film Studies is a research degree, involving original research on some aspect of contemporary theoretical and global issues in media and film. Our approach to media and film studies involves a developed critique of Eurocentrism. Our speciality is the analysis of the film and media industries, their contents and their audiences in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas, an approach equally well-suited to research on Latin American, East European and mainstream ‘Western' media.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

The MPhil/PhD in Linguistics is a research training programme which combines foundational and advanced courses in the core areas of linguistics, training on research methods and research work leading to a dissertation. The Department is strongly research-oriented, and through a combination of courses, advanced seminars and individual supervision, aims to provide the intellectual discipline, knowledge and skills required of a well-rounded researcher.

Supervision is offered in theoretical, descriptive and comparative linguistics, translation and language pedagogy. Depending on the research topic, it may also be possible to arrange joint supervision with specialists in other departments.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

The Department is able to supervise MPhil and PhD degrees by research and thesis in a wide range of cultural and linguistic subjects. Intending research students should not feel constrained to limit their choice of topics to those indicated against the names of current staff members (postgraduate students have recently been working on a range of topics that include Japanese cinema, Kabuki texts, modern Japanese linguistics and literature, Meiji historical texts, Korean linguistics and literature, Korean colonial and eighteenth-century history). Research undertaken at MPhil and PhD level is based on literary, documentary, and archive material available at SOAS and also gathered during fieldwork in Japan and Korea.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

Students may follow the PhD pathway in International Development by being based at either SOAS, LSHTM or IoE. All PhD students on the International Development pathway will attend an advanced research training seminar run by LIDC. The series will provide students in the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre's International Development Pathway with a broad understanding of interdisciplinary approaches to development, and a detailed understanding of selected areas of interest.

All MPhil/PhD in International Development research students will participate in the compulsory course work and attend research student seminars in the college and department where they are registered for the MPhil/PhD. At SOAS the Economics and Development Studies departments hold seminar series and students will be expected to involve themselves in the work of the relevant research clusters.... [-]

Mode of Attendance: Full-time or Part-time

The SOAS History Department is one of the world’s major centres offering supervision for research degrees in African and Asian history. It attracts students and scholarly visitors from all parts of the world. The top ratings given to the Department in the official national research assessments of 1996, 2001 and 2008 took into account the excellence of its research training, as well as the staff publication record. The Department provides opportunities for well-qualified applicants to join large groups of students and staff working in or around their specialist fields of history. The unique combination of individual supervision, taught courses and seminars ensure that the large majority of students complete their degrees within four years.... [-]