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The PhD in Law facilitates research in a wide range of areas that are represented through the Essex Law School's eight research clusters.

We offer supervision for our PhD in History in a range of topics from the period c.1500 to the present day, with particular focus on themes linked to our three research clusters and our Centre for Public History.

The University of Essex is one of few research-intensive universities to offer a practice-based PhD in curating. Like a traditional PhD in art history, this degree allows you to conduct sustained, innovative research about an issue from the field of visual culture, broadly defined.

Our PhD Statistics is an advanced research degree within our School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science and we have staff members available to act as supervisors across a number of areas within statistics.

Research in our School of Life Sciences covers a wide spectrum of biology from genes to ecosystems, and this broad-based structure provides opportunities for developing novel ideas and inter-disciplinary projects. We offer supervision in a wide range of topics in microbiology, ranging from medical microbiology to environmental microbiology and from biochemical and genomic analysis of single species to whole communities.

For our PhD in Philosophy, we offer supervision in a wide range of fields including: continental philosophy, history of philosophy, social and political philosophy, and medical humanities. We have an established international reputation and a strong tradition of postgraduate education, particularly in the specialist area of continental philosophy and - more recently - in the middle-ground between continental and analytic philosophy.

Our Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies offers supervision for PhD Literature in all fields of staff research interest, which includes a wide range of expertise in different literatures and in varying approaches to literature, covering most aspects from early modern to modern writing in English and a number of other languages. The Department's research strengths include Early Modern literature, Romanticism, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, US and Caribbean literature, postcolonial literature, modern, postmodern and contemporary (twentieth- and twenty-first century) literature, eco-criticism and nature writing, black and black diaspora writing, travel writing, First World War writing, literature and human rights, science fiction, and the post-human.

PhD Management (at our Colchester Campus) gives you the opportunity to interrogate issues surrounding the contemporary workplace and how these relate to wider society on a local and global level. This programme attracts students from a variety of backgrounds and nationalities, with wide ranging social science research interests.

Our Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies offers supervision for PhD Journalism from our expert academics, covering a range of research interests, including: journalism, public communication and policy in the Middle East and North Africa; media, democracy and democratisation, propaganda, influence and censorship, war reporting, counter-terrorism, the interplay between news media, social media and politics, parliamentary reporting in developing countries and in established democracies. As well-known and established journalists and scholars, our staff have published in reputable peer reviewed journals and flagship policy platforms as well as in renowned mainstream media organisations.

If you have a strong background in sociology, its cognate disciplines or interdisciplinary areas, and a well-formulated research proposal, then our PhD could be appropriate.