Funding
Scholarships, studentships and award opportunities to support your PhD research.
Search our list of awards
We offer a range of scholarships, studentships and awards available to support both UK and overseas postgraduate researchers. 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.
Finding funding
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. 'ESRC NWSSDTP').
- 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, they are:
- Alliance Manchester Business School: 1 December 2024
- School of Arts, Languages and Cultures: 13 January 2025
- School of Education, Environment and Development: 20 January 2025
- School of Social Sciences: 1 December 2024
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 will take place in October 2024 to support applicants from groups frequently underrepresented in higher education and Postgraduate Research:
- Applicants who are the first in their family to go to university [eventbrite.co.uk]: 30th October 12:30-14:30
- Global Majority candidates [eventbrite.co.uk]: 29th October 12:30-14:30
- Applicants who have been away from formal education for at least three years prior to applying for a PhD [eventbrite.co.uk]: 14th October 12:30-14:30
These workshops will cover:
- 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 the November 2023 sessions can be found on the NWSSDTP YouTube channel.
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.
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.