PhD Supervision areas

Below is a list of PhD supervision areas. This indicates the broad areas under which your PhD supervision might take place and some of the faculty that you might want to consider as a supervisor. Your project might fit neatly into one of these areas, but equally it might straddle more than one topic areas (indeed you’ll notice that most faculty are working across these subject areas). This is intended only as a broad guide to the sorts of subjects areas that could be supported. If you have any questions about a particular project and where it might fit, please do get in touch with the postgraduate convenor (Prof Jamie Gaskarth).

The Department of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) has an international reputation for research in the areas of British comparative and EU politics. POLIS researchers work with regional and national governments, offer expert analysis in British national and international media, and work with international and non-governmental organizations and policy makers. Within UK politics, supervision is available on the British political system, political history, third sector and NGO politics, labour unions, environmental organisations, social movements, the politics of protest and dissent, the politics of unpaid care and social care, and media and politics. In comparative politics we have an interest in British, French, German, Irish, Iranian, Latin American, South Asian and American politics, wider questions of global, regional and national governance. These include case studies and comparative research on democratisation, electoral systems, populism, political parties, transnational networks and citizen participation. On the EU, we can supervise on EU legitimacy and participation, European civil society, UK-EU relations and Brexit.

Potential supervisors

The Department of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) has an international reputation in the transformative field of Citizenship Studies, a rapidly developing and influential area of social science. POLIS researchers have been at the cutting edge of this development for over a decade. These innovations include ‘acts of citizenship’, feminist citizenship, practical ecological citizenship, the formation of new political subjects and even problematising the idea of citizenship itself. Researching citizenship involves critical questions of security and social cohesion, rights and duties, entitlements and obligations, justice and fairness, gender and ethnicity/race, inclusion and exclusion, human rights, protecting the vulnerable, migration, asylum, identity and active citizenship. The department encourages applicants who can contribute to this new wave of critical citizenship studies as well as to the transnational and comparative analysis of emerging citizen subject positions (such as indigenous, feminist, postcolonial and ecological citizenship as manifested in local and global movements). If you are interested in undertaking a PhD in Citizenship Studies, you might also want to consider applying as part of the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership Citizenship Studies pathway.

Potential supervisors

POLIS staff have an international reputation for producing world-leading research on key contemporary challenges in foreign policy, defence and security. Research outputs include work on leadership, decision-making, defence capabilities, security governance, threat perception, counter-terrorism, conflict resolution, disinformation and security competition. Notably, they have expertise in a range of national, regional and international contexts, including, the UK, EU, Russia, Iran, China, South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

They have provided advice to UK policymakers, including government departments like the Cabinet Office, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and Ministry of Defence, as well as parliamentary committees and inquiries.

We welcome enquiries about PhD study in the broad field of defence politics, including:

British and EU foreign, defence and security policy
Rising powers, Chinese foreign policy, Indian foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative
Counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation, national security politics, foreign policy, terrorism studies and critical security studies
Russian foreign and security policy, (Russian) national identity and nation building, memory politics/history politics/ historical narratives including commemoration
Populism and (social) media disinformation/propaganda/fake news/influence ops, public diplomacy/international broadcasting
(Critical) discourse analysis and narrative analysis, Iran’s domestic politics and foreign policy, Middle East politics
Gender, conflict resolution and peacekeeping.
African international relations

Potential supervisors

Politics and International Studies (POLIS) researchers have expertise in theories of international relations as well as their applications to both Western and non-Western contexts.

Against the backdrop of an increasing challenge to a western-dominated international order, our research spans several areas, including global order and justice, development, aid, international and regional society, global and regional governance, media, memory and war, and environment and climate; as well as a remarkably wide range of national foreign and security policies, such as those of the UK, Russia, the EU, Iran, the Middle East, China, Pakistan, South Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific.

Exploring foreign policy and regional co-operation, from cultural and public interactions to, social media use and development, our research encompasses media organisations, religious foundations, militaries, NGOS and sub-state regional economic actors. POLIS members also supervise students interested in critical engagements with mainstream international relations theory, including constructivism, postcolonialism, post-structuralism, Marxism, cosmopolitanism and accounts of governmentality.

Potential topics

EU politics, British foreign, defence and security policy
Comparative democratization, populism and the crisis of democracy, transitional justice, regional organizations in Latin America and comparative regionalism
Rising powers, Chinese foreign policy, Indian foreign policy, the Belt and Road Initiative
Counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation, national security politics, foreign policy, terrorism studies and critical security studies
Russian foreign and security policy, (Russian) national identity and nation building, memory politics/history politics/ historical narratives including commemoration
Populism and (social) media disinformation/propaganda/fake news/influence ops, public diplomacy/international broadcasting
(Critical) discourse analysis and narrative analysis, Iran’s domestic politics and foreign policy, Middle East politics
• Gender conflict resolution and peacekeeping

Potential supervisors

The Department of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) has an international reputation for research in political theory and ideologies, including critical, post-structuralist and normative theory; theories of citizenship; agonistic politics; international political theory; and research on the ideas and actions of social movements (such as ‘slow food’) and environmental justice campaigns. In terms of political concepts, POLIS can supervise students working on citizenship, justice, rights, duties, governance, power, community, ecology, and democracy, to name a few. We also encourage research in continental political philosophy and the intellectual history of political thought. We supervise on a range of political ideologies including transnational discourses and movements (cultural, ecological, gender, human rights, labour and emergent political subject positions), as well as conservative, liberal, labour and utopian discourses in the UK – especially those drawing on empirical cases, institutional practices and lived experience.

Potential supervisors

POLIS staff have an exceptionally wide range of regional expertise, encompassing Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, South and East Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

POLIS research explores contemporary issues of governance, cooperation, competition and conflict across most of the regions of the world. Our approach is both theoretical and empirical; but we are particularly interested in the practical implications of how regions are imagined, ordered, and institutionalised. Our work ranges from China’s Belt and Road initiative, to the EU’s management of Brexit, and the gender and conflict dynamics of Sub-Saharan African conflicts.

Staff have leading roles in a number of research organizations, such as Prof Simon Usherwood, who is currently President of UACES (the University Association for Contemporary European Studies) and Dr Brigitte Weiffen who is Chair of Research Committee 34 "Quality of Democracy" of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). POLIS staff research has been funded by the Horizon programme, the British Academy, Leverhulme and the ESRC.

Potential research topics

EU legitimacy and participation, European civil society, UK-EU relations and Brexit
China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Middle East politics and Oil diplomacy
Latin American regional cooperation
Sub-Saharan African trade, security and conflict resolution

Potential supervisors

Current PhD students

Our current and past PhD students are full members of the team.

Anna Colom
Paul Beel
James McConalogue
Lisa Pilgrim
Juliane Solf
Emma Connolly
Chris Smith
Joe Ruffell

Further Information for Prospective Students

You are encouraged to approach potential supervisors, or to contact the postgraduate convenor (Dr Dan Taylor) for suggestions regarding supervision. If you already have a draft proposal, send that along with your enquiry to give faculty members an idea of the kind of research you propose to undertake. If you don’t have a proposal ready, do include a few paragraphs in the email describing your proposed research. As staff are busy, if you want to receive support, you would need to get in touch in plenty of time. The convenor and the faculty will try to respond to you as quickly as possible, but as they receive a high volume of emails, please wait a week or two after you have made your initial contact. If you do not hear back after that, it is fine to send a reminder email.

You will need to submit a research proposal with your formal application. Alison Phipps has written a useful blog post on writing a good PhD proposal in the social sciences. We accept application in August and September for 1st October and December and January for 1st February start dates. Please note that funding deadlines are often eariler than PhD application deadlines. When available, studentships are advertised on the OU’s internal website, and on jobs.ac.uk. You will notice that adverts for studentships often specify research areas, which reflect the strategic research areas of the faculty. You may find it useful to spend some time developing your research proposal to fit within the research priorities in the Faculty.

You should submit your application using the central Open University application form and read the guidelines for submission carefully. Information on the application process, including submission dates, funding opportunities, and deadlines. You can find general information about OU research degrees.