Find a PhD supervisor

Once you've identified the subject area you wish to research, you will need to find a supervisor for your project. All Doctoral Researchers are provided with a lead supervisor, who will act as the main source of academic supervisory support and research mentoring during your time as a Doctoral Researcher at the University.

Start your search

Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ for supervisors below to see who you think may be a great fit for your research area. Once you have identified they are able to offer appropriate supervisory support, you can start to reach out to staff using the contact details provided on their profile. 

Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ results for “criminal law”

Professor John Child

Professor John Child

Professor of Criminal Law
Head of Research (Law)

Birmingham Law School

John is interested in doctoral candidates in criminal law doctrine and theory, comparative criminal law, and/or criminal law and neuroscience.

John's previous successful doctoral students include:
* Rachel Gimson, ‘Captured red handed: the impact of social media on the evolving concepts of the criminal defendant and the presumption of innocence’ - Completed in 2016;
* Stavros Demetriou, 'Anti-Social Behaviour and Civil Preventive Measures: Creating Localised Criminal Codes?' - Completed in ...



Professor Chris Thornhill

Professor of Law

Birmingham Law School

Chris has supervised PhDs on many legal topics, including: Constitutional Reform in Kenya; Constitutional Reform in Egypt; the Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in National Constitutional Law in South America; the Global Right to Food; the History of International Criminal Law; Military Law and Legal Reform in China; Constitutional Law and Populism in Poland and Brazil; Constitutional Reform in Scotland; Constitutional Reform in Turkey; Constitutional Reform in ...

Dr Marianne Wade

Dr Marianne Wade

Reader in Criminal Justice

Birmingham Law School

European Criminal Law
European Criminal Justice
Comparative criminal and criminal procedure law
Structural Developments in Criminal Justice
Terrorism – Phenomena and Responses
Trafficking Human Beings

Current doctoral students:

The Challenges Associated with Identifying Victims of Trafficking Human Beings – Matthew Davis
The Suitability of Trial by Jury for Trafficking in Persons Cases – Jack Murphy









Dr Emma J Breeze

Assistant Professor in International Criminal Law

Birmingham Law School

International Humanitarian Law (the law of armed conflict), International Criminal Law, Transnational Criminal Law (to include cross-border crimes, such as trafficking and piracy)
International law and global legal studies (to include conflicts, transitional justice, international criminal law)




Professor Alexander Orakhelashvili

Professor Alexander Orakhelashvili

Professor of International Law

Birmingham Law School

Professor Orakhelashvili has supervised or is currently supervising doctoral students undertaking research in the following areas:
• Aut dedere aut judicare as a customary rule
• The UN member states and individuals sharing international responsibility for the serious violation of international law committed during peace support operations
• Iran and Nuclear non-proliferation
• John Austin’s theory of law
• Implications of New Technology for Targeting under International Humanitarian Law






Dr Kirsty Moreton

Dr Kirsty Moreton

Associate Professor in Law

Birmingham Law School

Dr Moreton is interested in supervising Doctoral Students in the areas of healthcare law, particularly decision-making, child and adolescent healthcare, pregnancy and reproduction, and palliative care. She also has interests in criminal law relating to sexual offences, and intersections with medical law. Topics utilising feminist and care ethics are also of interest.
Previously supervised to completion:
- Wendy Suffield, ‘Reconsidering the Moral Status of the pre-conscious fetus: a multi-criterial, multi-level ...

Dr Tara Lai Quinlan

Associate Professor in Law and Criminal Justice

Birmingham Law School

criminal law, criminal procedure, terrorism, counter-terrorism, police, disproportionality in the criminal justice system, stop and search, jury diversity

Professor Kate Bedford

Professor Kate Bedford

Professor of Law and Political Economy

Birmingham Law School

I am happy to read PhD proposals in the following areas:
• Law and development (especially in Latin America)
• Law and political economy
• Gender, sexuality, and law
• Gambling regulation





Professor Natasa Mavronicola

Professor Natasa Mavronicola

Professor of Human Rights Law

Birmingham Law School

Professor Mavronicola is keen to supervise postgraduate research students whose research interests lie in the following areas:

torture and inhuman and degrading treatment
the right to life
the interpretation of human rights
LGBT* rights
the interplay between counter-terrorism and human rights
the relationship between human dignity and human rights
the intersections between human rights and criminal justice
the relationship of any of the above with legal philosophy








Dr Peter Coe

Dr Peter Coe

Associate Professor
Director of Research Impact

Birmingham Law School

Dr Coe welcomes expressions of interest for prospective PhD students in his areas of interest, and the field of Media Law more broadly.

Professor Anthea Hucklesby

Professor Anthea Hucklesby

Professor of Criminal Justice

Birmingham Law School

Anthea has supervised research students in many aspects of criminal justice in the UK and internationally. She welcomes applications from UK and international students interested in any area of criminal justice including, but not limited to, electronic monitoring, pre-trial detention and bail, police powers, courts, prisons, community sentences, technologies and private and voluntary sector involvement in criminal justice.

Dr Jason Haynes

Dr Jason Haynes

Associate Professor of Law
Deputy Head of Postgraduate Research & PGR Mentor

Birmingham Law School

Anti-Human Trafficking Law
International Investment Law
Sports Law



Dr Jorge Caamaňo

Dr Jorge Caamaňo

Reader in Cellular Immunology

Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy

Jorge supervises doctoral research students in the following areas:

  • Signalling pathways involved in the development of secondary lymphoid organs and inflammation.
  • Induction of gene expression by members of theTumour Necrosis Factor Receptor family (TNF-R) and the NF-kB transcription factors during immune responses and disease.
  • The role of the NF-kB transcription factors during cell transformation.

In the last few years three PhD students have successfully completed a PhD under his supervision. ...

Dr Juliano Sarmento Cabral

Dr Juliano Sarmento Cabral

Associate Professor for Biodiversity Modelling and Environmental Change

School of Biosciences

Potential students to postgraduate supervision should be interested in one or more points:

  • Eco-evolutionary and biogeographical topics (e.g. evolutionary rescue, diversity gradients)
  • Environmental change and human impacts (e.g. habitat conversion, climate change, exploitation)
  • Computational work and mechanistic modelling (e.g. programming languages like R and Julia; agent-based models)
  • Tropical and species-rich systems
  • Range dynamics of plant and animal species

Dr Minjie Cai

Dr Minjie Cai

Associate Professor in Human Resource Management

Department of Management

Minjie is experienced in supervising PhD research and would consider prospective PhD supervision on the following subject areas, specifically in relation to frontline services work and emotional labour.

  • Sociology of work: skills and value creation/extraction in the labour process; organisational and technological change; gender and race representations.
  • Industrial relation: resistance and activism at work; labour organisation in response to deregulation, informalisation and precarity; trade unionism and the state.
  • Human resource ...

Professor Davide Calebiro

Professor Davide Calebiro

Head of the Department of Metabolism and Systems Science
Professor of Molecular Endocrinology
Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Centre of Membrane Proteins and Receptors (COMPARE)

Department of Metabolism and Systems Science

Davide Calebiro acts as primary and secondary supervisor for basic scientists and clinical research training fellows and is a supervisor in the MRC IMPACT Doctoral Training Programme.

Dr. Katie Callicott

Dr. Katie Callicott

Academic Tutor

School of Education

  • Applied Educational and Child Psychology Doctorate
  • MSci Psychology and Psychological Practice

Dr Chris Callow

Dr Chris Callow

Senior Lecturer in Medieval History

Department of History

I would welcome research students on a wide range of issues in the history and archaeology of early medieval western Europe, especially the Vikings and medieval Iceland and Scandinavia. Research proposals on social, cultural or economic history within particular medieval regions or communities would also be possible. I have published on the writing of history in the middle ages and would be interested in supervising similar topics on medieval narratives. ...

Professor Melanie Calvert

Professor Melanie Calvert

Professor of Outcomes Methodology
NIHR Senior Investigator

Department of Applied Health Sciences

Professor Calvert is interested in supervising doctoral researchers on the following subjects:

  • Outcomes Research
  • Patient reported outcomes in clinical trials or routine practice.

Current students

  • Harjeet Bhachu 
  • Aimee Jackson
  • Konrad Maruszczyk
  • Harjeet Bhachu 
  • Ellie McDermott

Graduated students

  • Samantha Cruz-Rivera   
  • Mohammad Tallouzi
  • Nicola Anderson 
  • Grace Turner
  • Derek Kyte
  • Adrian Gheorghe
  • Poorva Jain
  • Helen Kirkby
  • Matthew Richardson
  • Puvan Tharmanathan
  • Olalekan Lee Aiyegbusi
  • Janet Jones
  • Rebecca Mercieca-Bebber (University of Sydney) 

Studentships ...

Dr Steven Cammiss

Associate Professor in Law

Birmingham Law School

I am interested in supervising students in the broad fields of Criminal Justice, Policing and Law and Language. Previous students have completed their doctorates on subjects such as identifying vulnerability in police custody, the history of jury trial, and incitement to commit genocide.

Dr Adrian Campbell

Dr Adrian Campbell

Associate Professor
Convenor of Masters in Public Administration and Masters in Public Administration and Development

International Development Department

He has been lead supervisor for the following PhDs (year of graduation in brackets):

  • John Mwita (2004)
  • Fikret Radjabov (2009)
  • Alan Phelps (2010)
  • Molefe Phirinyane (2011)
  • Kashif Rathore (2012)
  • Alexander Kalgin (2014)
  • Amrit Rai (2015)
  • Ourathai Yosinta (2016)

He was co-supervisor for the following

  • Duncan Leitch (2014)
  • Tutik Rachmawati (2015)
  • Yogi Suwarno (2016)

He is currently the lead supervisor for the following PhD students:

  • Sabarinath Krishnan
  • Paul Lewis
  • Mohammad Roudo ...

Dr Courtney J. Campbell

Dr Courtney J. Campbell

Associate Professor in Latin American History
Joint Director of the University Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ Brazil Institute

Department of History

Brazilian History
Latin American History
U.S.-Latin American Relations
Race and Gender in the Americas


Dr Meghan Campbell

Dr Meghan Campbell

Reader in International Human Rights Law

Birmingham Law School

Gender Equality
International Human Rights Law
Socio-Economic Rights
Enforcement of Rights


Professor Alexander M. Cannon

Professor Alexander M. Cannon

Professor of Ethnomusicology

Department of Music

I welcome applications from research students interested in any of the following areas: Vietnamese music; traditional music of Asia and its diasporas; music and climate change; creativity theory; musical sustainability; intangible cultural heritage; and queer ethnography.