FAQ

The SWDTP is committed to being an inclusive partnership that does not discriminate on and is open to postgraduate study regardless of anyone’s age, gender, ethno-cultural heritage, sexuality, health conditions or impairments, socio-economic background or any other potential barriers to participation. If there are reasonable adjustments that you would like us to consider as part of our shortlisting process then please contact us at swdtp-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk , no later than the funding application deadline.

No, you do not need a Masters qualification to apply. If you do not have one and if your application is successful, it is likely that we will make your PhD funding conditional on passing, at an overall grade of 60% or above, a Masters course that is linked to the pathway to which you are applying. We will pay for you to take that course and provide you with a stipend. This means your overall period of funding and study will be extended by one year full-time or two-years part-time.

Every year we have more applications than we have studentships available to offer so, sadly, we have to reject good applicants. Typically, we have a total of 34 studentships available each year.

We use a combination of institutional selection, the judgment of academics in each pathway, a process of cross-pathway review and some (limited) randomisation to decide on who to shortlist, who to put forward to our awards panel, who to make initial offers to and who will be put on a wait list. We place caps on the number of applications that can go forward from institutions and from pathways at each stage of the shortlisting process with the goals of: aiming to make sure that applicants are not advantaged or disadvantaged by the ‘size’ of the pathway (the number of institutions offering it); balancing a competitive allocation process with ensuring a diverse range of disciplines and, by extension, students, institutions and types of research are represented within our student cohorts; and making sure the strategic steers are met.

We prefer to think of it as a research conversation although the exact timing and format of it will vary with the institution to which you are applying. There may not be an interview if you are not shortlisted by your institution for further consideration in this year’s process. A typical format of the conversation and questions that might be asked are in Annex D, which can be found here Pathway Leads and Supervisors | SWDTP. You may be asked to give a presentation as part of the interview, typically of between 5 and

10 minutes, giving a working title for your research, some initial research aims and objectives, a brief overview of ‘why the research matters’, and some thoughts about the methods or practices you will use to do the research. However, this is at the discretion of the institution and/or pathway to which you are applying.

Our interdisciplinary pathways support research that spans across disciplinary interests. They are (1) Climate Change, Sustainability and Society, (2) Global Challenges and Transformations: Geopolitics, Inequalities and Mobilities, (3) Health, Wellbeing and Society, and (4) Sociotechnical Futures and Digital Methods. For applications to interdisciplinary pathways, there must be a clear case for why the research should be considered interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinarity may arise in the cross-cutting nature of the research topic, theorisations and/or methods employed.

Yes, but additional funding for Difficult Language Training and Overseas Fieldwork can only be claimed if details are outlined in the original research proposal at the time of the studentship application. It is important to be realistic about the scale of the fieldwork. Costs have to be sensible and the places you are proposing to visit must be fully justified and essential to the intended research. You should work on the basis that the maximum funding for overseas fieldwork (not including any difficult language costs) will be about £4000. 

We also offer funding for Overseas Institutional Visits. If you can include details in your application, that is useful, but we recognise that these opportunities might not be known at the point of application. You will need to work within a budget of £3000. 

We are usually prohibited from funding travel to countries or parts of countries that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) advises against visiting. For the latest advice, please see https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice. In some cases, it may be possible to undertake the research remotely; for example, by interviewing people online. If so, and particularly if the research is politically sensitive, then it is important that you give thorough consideration to the safety and potential repercussions both to your respondents and to yourself, and make sure such risks are avoided. Discussion of the ethics of your research would need to be included in your application. 

Yes, but you need to be careful to make sure you stay within the following bounds. Critically, your research proposal must be substantively your own work and must neither plagiarise any other person’s work nor be written by anyone else on your behalf which would constitute contract cheating. That type of cheating is taken very seriously by universities and extends to using ChatGPT or other artificial intelligence tools to write substantial elements of your research proposal. Keeping in mind that a PhD is predominantly a written piece of work then if you did resort to such methods to try and write your proposal, then it is likely that you would struggle to complete a PhD so, as well as being forbidden, it is a very weak and unstable foundation for an application.

You may use grammar and spelling checking tools and we allow potential supervisors to read, comment and provide feedback on draft research proposals, if they are willing and have the time to do so. We also recognise that some research is collaborative and co-produced with an external partner that may provide guidance in framing what sort of research questions are of interest to them and what resources they have available to support the research (e.g. access to data, archives or policy networks). However, it would be entirely unacceptable to present another person’s work or ideas as your own and would likely result in any studentship offer and your place on a PhD programme being withdrawn, with the possibility of you being asked to pay back any of the scholarship received.

Research in Practice is about supporting skills development and professional development as a researcher with transferable skills that will support a career outside of the university sector, as well as within it. A key component of it is a placement, internship or equivalent, of three-months total length (but not necessarily taken in one three-month period).

Unless there is an exceptional and compelling reason not to do so then all students whose funded period began in October 2024 or after are expected to complete the Research in Practice placement, internship or equivalent, in accordance with the ESRC’s training requirements. Three months of funding to support this is included in the offer. Students who do not engage in the Research in Practice process are likely to have their funding reduced or withdrawn. 

We ask that anyone who applies to the SWDTP has us as their first choice for PGR funding. However, given the competitive nature of PhD funding, it is reasonable for you to apply to other funding opportunities too. Please keep in mind that we are looking for applicants who are keen to be a part of the SWDTP, the opportunities we offer, and our cross-institutional, postgraduate community. If you are planning to apply elsewhere, we encourage you to inform your prospective advisor as a courtesy to them for the time they will spend supporting your application.  

The process of reviewing applications takes from the middle of January (once the deadline for applications has passed), into March. This can seem like a long time, but it is used to check your application and supporting documentation, go through the process of institutional and pathway shortlisting, review the nominations from the pathways, and make a final ranking of shortlisted applicants. From about mid-March  onwards can make a first set of offers to an initial group of successful applicants. Some others will be placed on a wait list should places becomes available. We may not fully fill our places until the end of August or even September. 

Colleagues at our partner institutions will endeavour to keep you updated about the status of your application. 

Across UK Higher Education it is generally suspected that access to postgraduate study is neither as open nor as inclusive as it should be and that more needs to be done to widen participation and equality of opportunity. However, the data needed to help make the system be more equitable is not as complete or as reliable as it needs to be to most effectively support change.  

Providing EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) and equal opportunity data helps to better understand issues of selection and under-representation in postgraduate study. Such data are held confidentially and separately from the rest of your application. They are used only in aggregated and anonymised forms for internal monitoring purposes and as part of our required reporting to our funder, the ESRC – for example, as counts or percentages of the numbers in each category. We ask all applicants to complete the monitoring form. A link to the online form will be sent to you on submission of your funding application documents.  

Due to the number of applications we receive, the SWDTP does not offer feedback on the applications we receive.

Please refer to our complaints and appeals document, which can be found here. 

If you have any questions, we recommend emailing the relevant institutional contact, listed below, or asking your proposed supervisor. If none of these answer your query, please contact swdtp-enquiries@bristol.ac.uk.