| Qualifications |
Duration |
Start dates |
Application period |
PhD
(MPhil also available) |
Full-time: 3–4 years
Part-time: 6–8 years |
February and October |
January to April |
Qualifications
PhD (MPhil also available) |
Duration
Full-time: 3–4 years
Part-time: 6–8 years |
Start dates
February and October |
Application period
January to April |
Our research in software engineering is concerned with how software is specified and developed in the real world. We have a large, active research group looking at requirement elicitation, analysis and specification, software architectures, and design.
We research software engineering in the human context: we want to understand how professionals develop software effectively, and how software changes over time in response to changing requirements. We research foundations, techniques, processes, and applications, using both formal and informal techniques drawn from mathematics, logic, and the social sciences. This diversity drives stimulating dialogues and cross-fertilisation of ideas.
Entry requirements
Minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent). If you are not a UK citizen, you may need to prove your knowledge of English.
Potential research projects
- Agile software development
- Assurance-driven software engineering
- Automated software engineering
- Empirical studies of software development
- End-user software engineering and scientific computing
- Mobile distributed systems
- Problem structuring and analysis
- Professional design practice
- Requirements engineering
- Security and privacy
- Software and engineering design
- Software architecture
- Software complexity
- Software evolution
Potential supervisors
Fees and funding
| UK fee |
International fee |
| Full-time: £4,786 per year |
Full-time: £15,698 per year |
| Part-time: £2,393 per year |
Part-time: £7,849 per year |
Some of our research students are funded via Doctoral Training Partnership EPSRC and the STEM Faculty; 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.
Links