PhD students

The School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences has postgraduate students studying across all of our research areas. LHCS staff also support PhD students through The Open University's Affiliated Research Centre programme which enables leading research institutes from around the world, who do not have their own research degree awarding powers, to provide doctoral training with our support.

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BBSRC-NERC funded ‘Interdisciplinary Life and Environmental Science Landscape Award’ (ILESLA) PhD studentship opportunities

A new doctoral training initiative, the Interdisciplinary Life and Environmental Science Landscape Award (ILESLA), has been launched to address pressing societal and environmental challenges. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) are funding the programme, which will run from 2025 to 2033.

Led by the University of Oxford, the programme brings together an esteemed consortium of academic and research institutions, including The Open University (OU), Oxford Brookes University, The Pirbright Institute, and the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. The initiative aims to foster a new generation of researchers capable of tackling critical challenges at the intersections of biological and environmental sciences.

To learn more, including how to apply, please click here.

To identify suitable supervisors from our School, you can consult the excel file linked below, which contains a list of LHCS supervisors, with their research webpage (when available), research themes and keywords. ILESLA_LHCS_supervisors_Dec2025.xlsx

The current projects for which studentships are available are listed under the heading to the right of the screen.

Current research students