Digital Cultures, Networks, and Social Change

Award Award	Duration Duration	Start dates Start dates	Application Application
PhD (MPhil also available) PhD (MPhil also available)	Full-time: 3–4 years Part-time: 6–8 years Full-time: 3–4 years Part-time: 6–8 years	February and October February and October	January to April January to April

Digital sociology analyses digital technologies not just as tools, but as mediators, environments, and infrastructures through which culture, work, knowledge, identities, and collective action are structured. Social media platforms, AI, digitally mediated networks, and data infrastructures create possibilities for participation and collaboration, while also concentrating power, transforming authority, and reproducing inequalities. Research in this area examines the relationship between digital technologies and social change across everyday life, organisations, and institutions.

Research students in this area will be based in Sociology within the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies. The sociology group offers specialist supervision in substantive areas of digital sociology. We also provide instruction and expertise in a broad range of innovative research methodologies, social theories, and general contemporary sociology. Students may use a wide range of qualitative and mixed methods, including interviews, digital ethnography, discourse and platform analysis, surveys, social network analysis, and innovative visual or participatory approaches.

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

We particularly welcome projects exploring how people interpret, negotiate, resist, and repurpose technologies, and how digital systems both enable and constrain individual and collective agency. Potential research areas include, but are not limited to:

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

Some of our research students are funded via The Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership; others 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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