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The School has a long tradition of high-quality research among its staff and students. The School’s vibrant research culture attracts students from all over the work who conduct research at the forefront of our discipline. The breadth of expertise within the School enables us to provide research supervision on a wide range of topics across Politics and International Relations.
Research students can specialise in one of the following areas:
- Comparative Politics
- International Conflict Analysis
- International Relations
- Political and Social Thought
The school welcomes applications from any sub-field of political science and international relations in which we have expertise. The School would like to particularly encourage applications for PhDs in International Relations or Comparative Politics with a focus on gender and identity politics, or women and politics. We welcome proposals with qualitative, quantitative, or mixed method approaches.
Candidates are not required to contact a potential supervisor before submitting a formal application and any informal enquiries can be sent directly to polirpgadmissions@kent.ac.uk.
The research interests of our staff can be found here.
PhD Scholarships
We are pleased to offer the following scholarship opportunities:
- Vice Chancellor’s Research Scholarship
- ESRC funded South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) PhD studentships
- AHRC funded Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE) PhD studentships
- Global Challenges Doctoral Centre (GCDC) PhD Scholarships
The School is also pleased to offer one overseas student scholarship, like the university VC scholarships the scholarship will be administered under the Graduate Teaching Assistant Scheme, but in addition this scholarship will cover tuition fees at the overseas student rate.
Deadline summary
Below is a summary of the main application deadline. Further deadline information can be found after the above scholarship links. Please note that only complete applications can be considered by the below deadlines, so we would urge you to submit your application in advance of the application to allow time for information requests and references.
- AHRC funded CHASE scholarship: Midnight (GMT) Friday 10 January
- Vice Chancellor’s Research scholarship: Midnight (GMT) Sunday 19 January
- GCDC Scholarship: Midnight (GMT) Sunday 19 January
- Overseas school scholarship: Midnight (GMT) Sunday 19 January
- ESRC funded SeNSS scholarship: Midnight (GMT) Monday 20 January
Interviews
All interviews for successfully shortlisted candidates will take place in the week commencing 27 February 2020. All PhD applicants should be available to attend an interview either in person or via Skype during this week.
Further information
For more information on any of our scholarships please contact polirpgadmissions@kent.ac.uk.