Opportunites: Studentships

Alternative routes to Graduate Study at the EGI

We welcome enquiries about conducting graduate studies at the EGI. Most graduate students study for a DPhil (Oxford's version of a PhD), which involves three years' research in depth on one particular area. The department also runs an excellent MSc course in Integrated Biosciences, which is a year-long course involving a mix of taught courses and research projects (see the main department website for details). Many of the students that have taken the MSc course have subsequently registered for a DPhil in Zoology at Oxford. Typically there are between ten and fifteen students reading for a DPhil within the EGI at any one time.

Some potential graduate students contact us without a firm idea of what they would like to study. You are strongly encouraged to try to develop your own ideas with respect to the area of research that interests you, and to choose (and then contact) an appropriate supervisor from the EGI, based on the research that that person is doing. Follow this link for further advice by an ex-EGI DPhil student.

The second question that then applies with respect to doing a DPhil here is: Do you have any funding? Unfortunately, we do not have any scholarships that we can award solely within the EGI, which means that we are unable to fund people for DPhils without access to external funding.

However, there are still many potential sources of funding for a DPhil:

1. UK Research Council Quota Studentships: The department receives a certain number of these each year, and they are generally allocated to supervisors with specific projects in mind. These are then advertised on the EGI website, and on FindaPhD.com, usually in December, with a closing date in January or February. For example, we received two NERC quota studentships to start in October 2005 (deadline for applications for these: 14 January 2005). Applications must be made via the graduate studies office (see the main department website for details). These studentships are open to EU students; non-UK students are eligible only for the fees component of the award.

(2) Tied studentships: These are studentships that are tied to a particular research grant: these are advertised separately in the event that we have such funding.

(3) Oxford-based Scholarships: There are several sources of funding for students, both from the UK, Europe and further afield run within Oxford. Details of these can be found on the University's main website under information for graduate students.

(4) Other funding sources: Students have sometimes brought their own DPhil funding to the EGI, most often from abroad. In this instance prospective students are welcome to first discuss the possibility of doing a DPhil at the EGI. In the first instance they should contact a staff member at the EGI with similar research interests in order to establish whether their project would fit into the institute's research plans. They would then asked to demonstrate that i) their ideas are well thought out, ii) that it is logistically possible to undertake the proposed work and iii) that the source of funding they intend to apply for is sufficient to cover the costs of a 3-year DPhil at Oxford plus any other costs. This would involve submitting a fully referenced proposal of usually not more than 1500 words.