How to Find a Supervisor 

Find a supervisor

How to Find a Supervisor

CASE collaborative studentships are awarded for projects previously developed by a supervisor, so your supervisor, and the general outline of the project, is already.

Studentships in the Open Competition are awarded for projects originated by the student applicant. Once you have an idea of the purpose and scope of your project, you should approach an academic at one of our three partner institutions to see if they will act as your supervisor and help you to refine your project idea as necessary. As you’ll see from our application forms, if you are applying for a 1+3.5 award you are not expected to have as fully-formed a research proposal as someone who is applying for a +3.5 award and already has a Masters degree or relevent experience.

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Staff profiles on departmental websites are a good place to start to find academics who share your research interests. You can also approach academics within departments who are designated as ‘PGR or PhD Tutors’ or Administrative Staff responsible for PGRs. It is relevant to do this even if you’re applying for a 1+3.5 award and will need to undertake a Masters first because a condition of a 1+3.5 award is that you’ll continue immediately into a PhD programme after your Masters is completed. It’s therefore strongly advised that you choose a supervisor for your Masters degree/thesis who will continue to act as a PhD supervisor for you.

If you will be undertaking a Masters programme, you can also look at the modules on the Masters programme for which you’re applying: who teaches those modules? Those academics are likely well-placed to supervise or suggest colleagues with similar interests who might be willing to supervise your project.

Please see below for other sources of guidance on finding a supervisor.

Advice on finding a supervisor

You can find some advice and guidance on the process of finding a supervisor for your research degree within the links below:

Advice on finding a supervisor
Research portals

Research Portals

We also recommend you visit the research portals for the institutions within our partnership. There you will be able to search by the academic’s name or subject/discipline/field of research: