Applications will be considered from students with, or expecting to gain, a first degree in any of a wide range of disciplines including physics, mathematics, engineering, biology, chemistry or similar disciplines at first or upper second class.
Full-time PhD students in the Department of Physics & Astronomy have 2 or 3 joint or co-supervisors, but in all cases a primary supervisor is identified, with overall responsibility for that student. Students are recruited for specific projects prepared by the potential supervisors, and a number of factors are considered during the recruitment process, including the workload and responsibility of potential supervisors, the timeliness of the project, skills and interests of specific applicants. All research active staff supervise one or more students.
STFC studentships, including all tuition fees and maintenance allowance are open to all qualifying
Studentships funded by The Open University are open to all applicants and offer fees and maintenance, generally at the same rate as offered by STFC.
Part-Time PhD
Part time PhD study is offered by the OU as part of its mission to provide continuing education for people who are not in a position to undertake full time study. The requirement for a PhD is a new and substantial contribution to the research field, and in general the most obvious research lines will be pursued by full-time researchers. Hence, projects for part-time study need to be very carefully designed. The project must produce results which are a novel contribution to the field at the time of completion (usually about 6 years after the part-time student begins work), and it must be possible to undertake the project without access to usual university facilities.
Usually, part-time PhD students in The Department of Physics & Astronomy are pursuing research work which draws upon skills or knowledge related to their other activities. Part-time students have a minimum of two supervisors, an internal supervisor who is a member of the central academic staff at the OU, and an external supervisor who works in the same research field and is geographically close to the student.
In recognition of the challenges inherent in pursuing PhD research outside the daily work environment of an academic department, the OU is careful to select only part-time PhD students who are likely to succeed. Sadly this means we receive far more part time PhD enquiries than we are able to satisfy. The first step for part-time PhD applicants is for them to identify the area in which they would like to work as well as potential supervisors. They are then responsible for writing a detailed proposal describing the research work they will undertake. Once an applicant has submitted a promising research proposal, it will be refined in collaboration with the prospective internal supervisor.
Generally, part-time PhD students are required to be resident in the
No studentships are available for part-time research and students are responsible for tuition fees as described in the University Research Prospectus.
MSc
The Department of Physics and astronomy is unfortunately not able to offer funding for MSc programmes and only occasionally accept students for MSc by research.
