Postgraduate research funding in the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures
Select the headings for more information
The studentship is for 3 years and covers full fees for UK students, plus maintenance of £15,000 per year (subject to an inflationary increase in each year).
The Department of Politics invite applications for a PhD studentship in any aspect of democratisation, nationalism, and ethnicity studies (broadly understood) relating to Central and Eastern Europe or comparative studies with other regions.
The studentship starts from October 2026 (start date negotiable). It is intended for individuals of outstanding potential as future scholars and academic researchers who wish to pursue a PhD at Liverpool.
The applications will be assessed by a committee and evaluated against the research excellence of the proposed project and the existing academic achievements of each candidate. Applicants should have a good first degree and hold (or be about to complete) a Master’s degree in a relevant discipline.
Please submit your initial application to Professor Erika Harris, e.harris@liverpool.ac.uk and copy in (cc) hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk by 30 June 2026.
Please include the following:
Shortlisted candidates will be informed by the end of July and invited for an online interview.
Finally, the successful candidate will be invited to a formal application via https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-taught/applying/online/
For further inquiries, please write to Professor Erika Harris: e.harris@liverpool.ac.uk
Applications are invited for one E. Allison Peers Doctoral Scholarship in Iberian and Latin American Studies, to begin in October 2026.
The scholarship provides full fees at the Home student rate (approx. £5,000) for students undertaking the PhD in Hispanic Studies, PhD in Latin American Studies or PhD in Modern Languages, plus a £6,000 yearly stipend.
Teaching and research in Iberian and Latin American Studies at Liverpool is informed by a plurilingual, pluricultural understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world. We welcome applications from students wishing to undertake research in any one or more of Basque Studies, Catalan Studies, Galician Studies, Portuguese Studies (Brazilian and European), Spanish Studies and Latin American Studies. We especially encourage applications that are comparative or relational, and which cross languages and national borders. Possible focuses for study include: cultural politics and the politics of culture, popular culture, film and visual culture, literary studies, digital culture, gender and sexuality, transnational, postnational and postcolonial studies, migration and diaspora, memory and representation.
Scholarships will be awarded on the basis of demonstrated academic excellence. Applicants are required to make contact with a potential supervisor for assistance in formulating a research proposal. Please see research specialisms on our Department of Languages, Cultures and Film staff pages. Completed expressions of interest should reach the department by 1 April 2026. Applicants for an E. Allison Peers Scholarship must also make a formal application for admittance to the PhD in Modern Languages (Hispanic and Latin American Studies pathways) at the University of Liverpool by that same date. See postgraduate research application guidance and a link to our online application portal.
To apply for the E. Allison Peers Doctoral Scholarship, please complete and return the E. Allison Peers Scholarship Expression of Interest Form (PDF, 29KB).
For consideration, applications must be submitted to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk.
Application deadline: 1 April 2026.
For more information about the scheme or an informal discussion, please email Professor Claire Taylor: c.l.taylor@liverpool.ac.uk.
Applications are invited for up to two E. Allison Peers master's Scholarships in Iberian and Latin American Studies, to begin in September 2025. The Scholarship covers fees plus a £5,000 stipend, for students undertaking a Hispanic topic in any master's programme in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University of Liverpool.
Teaching and research in Iberian and Latin American Studies at Liverpool is informed by a plurilingual, pluricultural understanding of the Luso-Hispanic world. We welcome applications from students wishing to undertake research in any one or more of Basque Studies, Catalan Studies, Galician Studies, Portuguese Studies (Brazilian and European), Spanish Studies and Latin American Studies.
We especially encourage applications that are comparative or relational, and which cross languages and national borders. Possible focuses for study include: sociolinguistics, translation studies, cultural politics and the politics of culture; popular culture; visual culture; literary studies; film studies; digital culture; gender and sexuality; transnational, postnational and postcolonial studies; migration and diaspora; memory and representation.
Scholarships will be awarded on the basis of demonstrated academic excellence. Applicants are required to make contact with a potential supervisor for assistance in formulating a research proposal; for a list of potential supervisors and their specialist areas, and an “expression of interest” form, please see the document overleaf.
Completed expressions of interest should reach the department by 31 July 2025.
Applicants for an E. Allison Peers Scholarship must also make a formal for admittance to one of the master’s programmes offered by the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University of Liverpool by that same date:
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/courses/translation-ma (Spanish pathway)
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/courses/modern-languages-and-cultures-mres (Any Hispanic pathways, including Latin American Studies)
Peers master's scholarship 2025-26 application form (Word doc, 28kb)
Applications should be submitted to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk.
The Studentship is named after Ramsay Muir (1872-1941), who studied History at the then University College Liverpool and served the new University of Liverpool as Professor of History between 1906 and 1913, before resigning to work in higher education in colonial India.
One fully-funded (fees and maintenance) PhD studentship. The studentship provides three years of full-time funding, including tuition fees at the home-student rate and an annual maintenance stipend equal to the standard UKRI rate (£20,780 p.a. in 2025-26).
This studentship is open to all applicants. We strongly encourage applications from communities underrepresented in UK academic History, including people from Global Majority communities who are currently underrepresented in the department’s teaching and research.
To be eligible for this studentship, you will first need to have applied for a PhD place at the University of Liverpool before the deadline for this competition and be a Home fee status student. You do not need to wait for the outcome of your application before applying for funding.
The successful candidate will have either a first-class or a 2:1 undergraduate degree in a relevant subject and will have completed or be close to completing a Master's degree by September 2026.
The remit for this Studentship is deliberately broad, and we are very keen to hear from applicants how they would take ownership of the project for themselves. To apply, please send a CV (including degree transcripts), a sample of academic work (3,000-8,000 words in length), and a 500-1000 word summary of how you intend to approach the topic to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk by 5pm GMT on Friday 30 May 2026.
In developing your proposal, it is essential that you identify a potential supervisor/supervisors within the Department of History and that you make contact with those members of staff prior to submitting your application. You can find a list of staff in the Department of History here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/staff/. General queries should be addressed to the co-editors of The Original Redbrick, Professor Roland Clark (clarkr@liverpool.ac.uk) or Professor Mark Towsey (towsey@liverpool.ac.uk).
The Studentship has been created to coincide with a major new book project celebrating 150 years of history at the University of Liverpool. The Original Redbrick: 150 Years of the University of Liverpool (to be published in the University’s anniversary year, 2031) takes an innovative approach to the history of higher education by telling the entangled story of Liverpool as a city and of the University of Liverpool as an institution as the two evolved together over time. Involving an interdisciplinary team of authors drawn from across the University’s three Faculties, the book will explore the campus as an urban space, a site of student life and activism, medical and scientific innovation, and cultural change, highlighting themes of politics, identity, environment and resilience across 150 transformative years.
The Studentship itself will run alongside the book project, producing original new research on a topic selected and developed by the successful candidate, who might choose to treat Liverpool as one of several case studies, or else focus entirely on the University of Liverpool itself.
Potential approaches to the topic may include, but are not limited to:
In addition to completing a doctoral dissertation, the successful candidate will also join the wider team developing The Original Redbrick book project, benefiting from hands-on practical experience and employability opportunities working alongside the academic editors, the project’s steering group and the publishing team at Liverpool University Press (LUP), who will act as Collaborative Doctoral Partner for the Studentship. The precise nature of these opportunities will be agreed between the successful candidate, their academic supervisors and the editorial team at LUP once the project has started, to be reviewed twice-annually.
As a PhD student, you will form part of an active postgraduate research community within the History Department, who hold Work-in-Progress seminars and organise an annual History postgraduate conference, which invites speakers from within and outside the University. You will have dedicated career development training from history staff, giving you guidance on subjects such as academic publishing and post-doctoral fellowships, as well as opportunities to apply for paid teaching experience on certain undergraduate modules.
PhD students are a central part of the department’s vibrant research culture. You will have access to a dedicated study space within the School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, enabling you to meet and form interdisciplinary collaborations with other early-career scholars during your time at Liverpool. The Department contributes to several highly active interdisciplinary research centres which offer further opportunities for collaboration, enrichment and career development, including the Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Eighteenth-Century Worlds, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, the Centre for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, the Centre for Health, Arts, Science & Environment, and the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies. The University’s Libraries, Museums and Galleries department holds outstanding archival and heritage collections relating to the history of the University, the city and their connections nationally and internationally, while the Department also has excellent links with a wide range of museums and other institutions on Merseyside and beyond, including National Museums Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum, the Bluecoat contemporary arts centre, the Athenaeum and Unilever Archives.
The award will be made based on the academic merit of your application, including the fit between the proposed project, the supervisory team and wider research priorities within the Department.
Deadline: 5pm, Friday 30 May 2026.
The Institute of Irish Studies in pleased to offer the Owen Templeman prize for 2025.
The prize is a £3000 bursary towards funding postgraduate study related to the discipline of Celtic Studies.
You must have been assessed for fee status as a ‘home’ student, or expect to be assessed as a ‘home student’.
How to apply
To apply for the Owen Templeman Prize please provide:
For consideration, applications must be submitted to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk. Please give the subject line of your email as ‘Owen Templeman Prize Application’.
Application deadline: 31 July 2025
The Department of History at the University of Liverpool is pleased to invite applications for two fully-funded (fees and maintenance) PhD studentships to start on 1 October 2025. One studentship will be ring-fenced for Black applicants and may focus on any field of historical study and any period in which the department has supervisory expertise. The other studentship will focus specifically on the History of Race, Health and Medicine in any period between 1700 and the present. These studentships provide three years of full-time funding, including tuition fees at the home-student rate and an annual maintenance stipend equal to the standard UKRI rate (£19,237 p.a. in 2024-25).
This studentship is funded through Departmental endowments to signal our support for the findings of the Lifting Barriers to Black Academia Through Decolonisation and Positive Action Report, which follows on from an online series of symposia hosted by the Department’s Centre for the Study of International Slavery in 2021. The report documents the racial disparities and barriers Black scholars face in progressing at higher education institutions and recommends positive action to address the awards gap for Black academic staff and research students. This studentship will be ring-fenced for applicants of Black ethnicity (including Black British, Black African, Black Caribbean or dual heritage backgrounds), since this group has been disproportionately under-represented in doctoral study and research funding in History, in our University and nationwide.
This studentship will focus on any field of historical study and any period in which the department has supervisory expertise. The Department of History is part of the School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, one of the largest Schools in the University, exploring culture and society from the origins of humanity and ancient history to modern-day politics. We are an interdisciplinary group of historians committed to an engaged approach to the global past. In the 2021 REF exercise, 100% of our research was classified as 4* and 3* for Research Environment. We had a 24% increase in 4* research across our outputs, impact, and environment since the last REF. We place particular emphasis on addressing historical injustices through our work on the Holocaust, medical racism, slavery, and colonial and postcolonial violence. From the rise of the far right to climate change, health care, library provision, abortion, religious intolerance and knife crime, we pride ourselves on using historical research to inform key contemporary debates.
As a PhD student, you will form part of an active postgraduate research community within the History Department, who hold Work-in-Progress seminars and organise an annual History postgraduate conference, which invites speakers from within and outside the University. You will have dedicated career development training from history staff, giving you guidance on subjects such as academic publishing and post-doctoral fellowships, as well as opportunities to apply for paid teaching experience on certain undergraduate modules.
PhD students are a central part of the department’s vibrant research culture. You will have access to a dedicated study space within the School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, enabling you to meet and form interdisciplinary collaborations with other early career scholars during your time at Liverpool. The Department contributes to several highly active interdisciplinary research centres which offer further opportunities for collaboration, enrichment and career development, including the Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Eighteenth-Century Worlds, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, the Centre for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, the Centre for Health, Arts, Science & Environment, and the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies. The Department also has excellent links with a wide range of museums and other institutions on Merseyside and beyond, including National Museums Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum, the Bluecoat contemporary arts centre, the Athenaeum and Unilever Archives.
This studentship will focus specifically on any aspect of the history of race, health and medicine from the 18th through to the 21st century. The relationship between medicine and race – including medical racism – has recently attracted sustained attention and significant responses from national medical and public health associations, including the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association and the American Public Health Association, with major medical publications connected to these leading organizations publishing special issues on the subject (see: BMJ, AJPH, JAMA). Potential projects might, for example, consider the global circulation of medical knowledge produced in the context of the ‘plantation system’; health care practices and health care experiences of Global Majority groups in a specific historical period or geographic setting; the racialization of bodies, diseases and illnesses; issues around the training and career development of Global Majority staff within medical systems such as the British NHS.
There are a wealth of opportunities and archival resources relevant to this topic within the Liverpool city region, including those relating to the first Liverpool Infirmary (opened in 1748), the Liverpool Medical Institution (founded as a medical subscription library in 1779) and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (established in 1898). The University of Liverpool Library system has extensive holdings related to the global history of slavery and the history of medicine, including key print and online resources such as the full series of The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography and Gale Nineteenth-Century Collections Online: Science, Technology, and Medicine, 1780-1925. Other relevant initiatives at the University of Liverpool include the interdisciplinary Centre for Health, Arts, Science & Environment and the University’s flagship partnership with Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery.
This studentship is open to all applicants. We strongly encourage applications from communities underrepresented in UK academic History, including people from Global Majority communities who are currently underrepresented in the department’s teaching and research.
To apply, please send a CV (including degree transcripts), a PhD proposal of between 500 and 1000 words, and a sample of academic work (3,000-5,000 words in length) to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk by 5pm GMT on Friday 30 May 2025. In their application, candidates should make clear to which studentship they are applying.
In developing your proposal, it is essential that you identify a potential supervisor(s) within the Department of History and that you make contact with those members of staff before submitting your application. You can find a list of staff on theDepartment of History staff page. General queries should be addressed to the Departmental Director of Postgraduate Research Dr Junqing Wu (Junqing.Wu@liverpool.ac.uk).
To be eligible for these studentships, you will need first to have applied for a PhD place at the University of Liverpool prior to the deadline for this competition and be a Home fee status student. You do not need to wait for the outcome of your application before applying for funding.
The award will be made based on the academic merit of your application, including the fit between the proposed project, the supervisory team and wider research priorities within the Department. The successful candidate will ordinarily have either a first class or a 2:1 undergraduate degree in a relevant subject, and will have completed or be close to completing a master's degree by September 2025.
The studentship is a fees-only award which covers the annual fees for a Home PhD student for the period of 3 years.
The studentship is open to any Home PhD candidate who has not yet started their PhD degree. Please submit a 2-page CV and your Expression of Interest as a single Word or PDF document of no more than 2000 words. Please include into this Expression of Interest:
Applications will be assessed by a Politics board against their academic merit and the supervisory fit to the project. Since we expect a high volume of applications, we regret that we cannot provide feedback to unsuccessful candidates.
You can find further information on a Politics PhD at Liverpool and our department staff expertise. It is expected that you have contacted your potential supervisors when you make the application.
Please send the above detailed application documents for the funding to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk.
You also need to submit an application to the Politics PhD Programme at the same time through our website.
Deadline: 30 May 2025, 5pm.
For more information or any informal questions, please contact Dr Birte Gippert, Politics PGR Director.
The Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology is pleased to invite applications for one fees-only scholarship to support one doctoral student in Egyptology, tenable from 1 October 2025.
The successful candidate will receive a scholarship covering full-time funding for university fees at the home-student rate (currently set at £5,006) for three years (subject to satisfactory progress).
The competition is open to all home students who have applied for the PhD programme in Egyptology and will commence their studies in the 2025-26 academic year. Applications should be submitted by Friday 20 June 2025 at 12pm, noon (GMT).
To apply for the Egyptology Studentship, please provide:
For consideration, applications must be submitted to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk.
Please give the subject line of your email as ‘Rankin Studentship in Egyptology Application’.
Application deadline: Friday, 20 June 2025 (GMT)
This studentship is intended to fund one home student who is undertaking a full-time doctorate in Egyptology.
Please note that students may not be in possession of any other bursary, award or scholarship awarded by the University of Liverpool, or of external doctoral funding such as the AHRC NWCDTP studentships.
The Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology is pleased to invite applications for one fees-only scholarship to support one doctoral student in the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ANE), tenable from 1 October 2025.
The successful candidate will receive a scholarship covering full-time funding for university fees at the home-student rate (currently set at £5,006) for a period of three years (subject to satisfactory progress).
The competition is open to all home students who have applied for the PhD programme in Archaeology to pursue a relevant programme of research and will commence their studies in the 2025-26 academic year.
Applications should be submitted by Friday, 20 June 2025 at 12pm (Noon, GMT).
To apply for the ANE Studentship, please provide:
The award will be assessed based purely on academic merit. Please note that, with only one studentship available, only students who have achieved (or are expected to achieve) a distinction classification (or equivalent) on a postgraduate taught programme are likely to be competitive.
For consideration, applications must be submitted to the HLC Research Team at hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk by 12 noon on Friday 20 June 2025 (GMT).
Please write ‘Rankin ANE Studentship Application’ in the subject line of your e-mail.
This studentship is intended to fund one home student who is undertaking a full-time doctorate in the study of the Ancient Near East. Please note that students may not be in possession of any other bursary, award or scholarship awarded by the University of Liverpool, or of external doctoral funding such as the AHRC NWCDTP studentship.
This bursary is named after Sarah Ann Barrow, who endowed the James Barrow Chair of French at the University of Liverpool in memory of her husband. The chair was established in 1905 and was among the first endowed positions in French in English Higher Education.
Applications are invited for the Sarah Barrow Bursary in French and/or German Studies, to begin in the forthcoming academic year.
The Bursary of £6,000 is intended to provide full fees at the Home student rate, plus a payment of the remainder to contribute towards maintenance costs.
Applicants to the one-year MRes in Modern Languages and Cultures (French or German Studies pathway) are eligible to apply for the full bursary; applicants to the two-year part-time MRes are eligible to apply for the same amount, but spread over two years. All applicants should be eligible for the UK (Home) fee status.
Scholarships will be awarded on the basis of demonstrated academic excellence, with preference given to candidates who otherwise would not be able to finance an MRes. Applicants are required to make contact with a potential supervisor for assistance in formulating a research proposal.
Applicants for Sarah Barrow Bursary must also make a formal application for admittance to the MRes in Modern Languages and Cultures (French or German Studies pathway) at the University of Liverpool by that same date.
For more information about the scheme or an informal discussion, please contact Dr Rebecca Dixon by emailing rjdixon@liverpool.ac.uk.
Application deadline: 29 August 2025