Choosing your PhD
During Year 1, you will identify a PhD project to carry out in Years 2-4. You will need to complete a research proposal form with your supervision team detailing the information given below. The proposal will be reviewed by the Programme Directors as part of your Year 1 Progression requirements. The Programme Directors reserve the right to ask you to modify or change your proposal if the intended research does not match the aims of this PhD programme.
The Supervision team
This must include a primary Academic Lead Supervisor who is based at your home university and co-supervisors who may be based at another university. We strongly encourage novel cross-university collaborations between HDRUK and Turing-affiliated universities. We also very much welcome supervision teams involving early-career academics who may have greater capacity to work with you on a day-to-day basis than very senior academics. Please also advise of any non-academic support you may receive (e.g. a company), what their involvement would be and what contractual arrangements are in place to govern these relationships.
Note that the primary Academic Lead Supervisor is someone who takes overall responsibility for your PhD progression on behalf of your home university. They may not necessarily be setting the research challenges or working with you on a daily basis. This support may come from the wider supervision team.
The Research Challenge
An overview of the research question(s) you wish to address during the project. The programme is not intended to be restrictive in the research areas that you can address but we expect that proposal would normally be related to HDRUK research areas and would include theoretical, methodological and/or applied elements.
It is unlikely that we would approve projects, for example, primarily involving:
- Substantial laboratory-based experimental work,
- Substantial field work and/or direct data collection,
- Qualitative research methods,
- Research that only relates to health in an indirect way,
- Pure theoretical or methodology research with no evidence of a route to a relevant health application.
Your overall research plan may, however include limited experience of, or training in, such areas for the purposes of gaining insight and broadening your understanding of different research methodologies.
Public and Patient Participation
Both Wellcome and Health Data Research UK strongly support the inclusion of public and patient participants in research. This may involve direct co-design of research in some instances, where relevant, or in other cases, simply ensuring research is written and/or explained in an accessible way. Your research proposals will include lay summaries that need to be written to a standard that will withstand the scrutiny of our Patient and Public Advisors.
Publication Plan
Publishing research outputs is an important part of a modern PhD. Outline what research outputs are anticipated. We are particularly interested in evidence that your research plan will give you the opportunity to produce standalone publishable outputs that are independent of any large collaborative projects that you may be linked to.
Data Access and Ethics
Detail any datasets you require that require special permissions to access. Outline any ethics approvals you may require. Provide an estimated time frame for obtaining data and ethics approvals.
Delays in data access or ethics approval can place student PhD progression at severe risk. We recommend that proposals have these in place before you begin work on your thesis project.
Risk mitigation plan
Identify any potential foreseeable obstacles that may prevent your project from proceeding on time or being delayed. Examples include delayed access to data or ethics protocol rejection. Discuss what alternatives will be available to you.