Citizenship, Democracy and Social Movements

Award Award	Duration Duration	Start dates Start dates	Application Application
PhD (MPhil also available) PhD (MPhil also available)	Full-time: 2–4 years Part-time: 3–8 years Full-time: 2–4 years Part-time: 3–8 years	October October	January to March January to March

Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at The Open University has an international reputation in the transformative field of Citizenship Studies, a rapidly developing and influential area of social science. POLIS researchers have been at the cutting edge of this field for over a decade, exploring the relationship between citizenship and the politics of migration, the formation of new political subjects, and even problematising the idea of citizenship itself.

Researching citizenship, democracy and social movements involves critical questions of rights and duties, entitlements and obligations, justice and fairness, gender and ethnicity/race, inclusion and exclusion, human rights, protecting the vulnerable, migration, asylum and identity. We encourage applicants who can contribute to this new wave of critical citizenship studies as well as to the transnational and comparative analysis of emerging citizen subject positions (such as indigenous, feminist, postcolonial and ecological citizenship as manifested in local and global movements).

Minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent). If you are not a UK citizen, you may need to prove your knowledge of English.

UK fee UK fee	International fee International fee
Full-time: £5,006 per year Full-time: £5,006 per year	Full-time: £12,705 per year Full-time: £12,705 per year
Part-time: £2,503 per year Part-time: £2,503 per year	Part-time: £6,353 per year Part-time: £6,353 per year

Research students can apply for funding via the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership with Oxford and Brunel, or the Open-Oxford-Cambridge DTP in collaboration with Oxford and Cambridge universities. The Citizenship Studies pathway of the Grand Union DTP is hosted within the Department. Alternatively, many of our students are self-funded.

For detailed information about fees and funding, visit Fees and studentships.

To see current funded studentship vacancies across all research areas, see Current studentships.

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