Studentships and funding

Below you will find the awards and scholarships we have available to support your Postgraduate Research in the Humanities Doctoral Academy.

Award deadlines change throughout the year, and some have specific application criteria so check the award page to see if you're eligible to apply:

• Browse our full list of awards

The University of Manchester funding

There are a range of scholarships, studentships and awards available to support both UK and overseas postgraduate researchers.

Section 9 of the application requests your intended funding sources. In this section, you should detail fully all the competitions in which you would like to be considered.

The section first asks 'Have you secured or do you intend to apply for funding to cover the cost of your studies?'. If you are self-funding, you may select 'no'.

If you would like to apply for funding, you must select 'yes' and provide the details of your funding intentions. If you intend to apply for multiple competitions, all must be detailed in section 9 to ensure you are included. There is no limit to the number of competitions you may enter. To enter an internal competition, please add a funding source, and populate the fields as below:

• Type of Funding - Uni of Manchester Scheme.
• Awarding Body - In the free text box, enter the name of the funding competition (e.g. 'Humanitarian Scholarship').
• Status of Funding - Intend to Apply.

The remainder of the boxes may be left blank. Please give any further relevant details in the 'any other comments' box. Select Add+ to detail further competitions.

Each of our schools have an application deadline for internal funding consideration:

• Alliance Manchester Business School: Deadline for 2024 has passed
• School of Arts, Languages and Cultures: Deadline for 2024 has passed
• School of Education, Environment and Development: Deadline for 2024 has passed
• School of Social Sciences: Deadline for 2024 has passed

 

Deadlines for 2025 entry will be published here by September 2024. The deadline for internal funding within schools is typically in December - January.

 

External funding

All external funding competitions (for example, AHRC NWCDTP and ESRC NWSSDTP) have a specified deadline for submitting your funding application and a separate (earlier) deadline for submitting the online programme application form, both of which will be stated in the funding competition pages, linked at the bottom of this page.

Research council workshops

ESRC NWSSDTP

A series of NWSSDTP workshops took place in November 2023 to support applicants from groups frequently underrepresented in higher education and Postgraduate Research.

These workshops covered:

• What it’s like to do a PhD
• Who the ESRC are and details about the funding/scholarships and exciting training opportunities available to support PhDs/postgraduate researchers
• The process of applying for an ESRC funded PhD including tips about how to navigate each stage of the process

A composite recording of these sessions can be found on the NWSSDTP YouTube channel.

Supervisor-led projects

You may choose to apply for a supervisor-led project. Undertaking a defined project allows you to contribute to ongoing research and make a difference to an identified challenge in the field of Humanities.

Unless specified in the advert, you won’t need to submit a research proposal, you'll just need the relevant project title and supervisor(s). Details on how to apply are given on the project page.

Browse our available supervisor-led projects.

Other funding sources

We also encourage you to approach other sources (such as your home government, Ministry of Education or employer) to enquire if they have any funding schemes available to which you can apply. 

Doctoral loans may be available through the UK government for those studying PhDs and equivalent doctoral programmes including professional doctorates. 

UK nationals who are ordinarily resident in England, aged 59 or under, who are not already receiving funding via a UK Research Council, are eligible. 

Featured studentships 

Commonwealth PhD Scholarships

Commonwealth PhD Scholarships support postgraduate researchers from Commonwealth nations to study in the University of Manchester.

There are separate competitions for candidates from High Income countries, and Least Developed Countries and Fragile States.