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 “family law”

Dr Davor Pavlovic

Dr Davor Pavlovic

Associate Professor in Cardiovascular Sciences

Department of Cardiovascular Sciences

Current and previous PhD Students

  • Sian-Marie O’Brien

    Defended thesis 2019 – "Regulation of intracellular sodium in the atria"
  • Dannie Fobian

    Defended thesis 2020 – "Translating the effect of rate control therapy in atrial fibrillation: from cellular response to cardiac function"
  • Chris O’Shea

    Defended thesis 2020 – "Developing a high-resolution optical mapping setup with integrated high-throughput analysis capabilites for dissecting molecular mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias"  
  • Simon Wells

    Defended thesis 2020 ...

Professor Rosie Harding

Professor Rosie Harding

Professor of Law and Society
Deputy Dean

Birmingham Law School

Professor Harding is happy to supervise postgraduate research students in any of the following areas:

- Mental Capacity and Disability Law, especially research involving questions of everyday decision-making, dementia, intellectual disability, powers of attorney, advance directives and end of life decision making.
- Older persons rights, especially research focused on older person’s attitudes to human rights, and the arguments for and against a new international convention on the rights of ...


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 Charlotte Bendall

Dr Charlotte Bendall

Associate Professor

Birmingham Law School

Charlotte is happy to supervise doctoral students for projects focusing on family law, especially those concerning adult relationships.

Dr Maureen Mapp

Dr Maureen Mapp

Associate Professor
Deputy Head of Education (Exams and Senior Tutor)

Birmingham Law School

Maureen is interested in supervising students on any of the following areas:
• Digital asset regulation
• African customary law in juridical settings
• Gender equality and sentencing
• Decolonising IP law





Professor Máiréad Enright

Professor Máiréad Enright

Professor of Feminist Legal Studies
Head of Research Impact

Birmingham Law School

I am willing to supervise research students in the following areas:

Gender, law and Religion, particularly from feminist or critical legal perspectives.
Politics of reproductive justice.
'Historical' institutional abuse.
Law, activism and social movements.
I am happy to answer email queries from prospective students before submission of an official proposal.





Professor Lisa Webley

Professor Lisa Webley

Chair in Legal Education and Research

Birmingham Law School

Professor Webley supervises students undertaking empirical socio-legal research. She is keen to hear from candidates who wish to undertake research on:

Lawyer regulation, education, professionalism and legal ethics
Legal service delivery and the impact of technology
Access to justice and family justice
Public law and practice.




Dr Raya AL-Dadah

Dr Raya AL-Dadah

Reader in Sustainable Energy Technologies
Head of Sustainable Energy Technology Laboratory

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Dr. AL-Dadah works currently supervises the following doctoral research projects:

  • Anil Taskin (November 2020 to November 2024): Development of small-scale scroll expander for organic Rankine cycle. Sponsored by the Turkish Government.
  • Andrew Makar (October 2020 to October 2024): Development of open cycle desiccant cooling system using metal organic framework adsorbent materials for air conditioning application. Sponsored by the British Council.
  • Ibrahim Albaik (October 2019 to October 2023): Development and optimisation ...

Dr Melanie Griffiths

Dr Melanie Griffiths

Birmingham Fellow

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Migration, asylum, immigration detention, deportation, families, Article 8 rights, gender, men and masculinity, time, bureaucracies, legal courts, hostile environment

Professor Ian Grosvenor

Professor Ian Grosvenor

Emeritus Professor of Urban Education History
Director of the Voices of War & Peace Centre

School of Education

Ian is interested in the following research topics:

  • material cultures of schooling;
  • cultural diversity and race equality;
  • anti-racist and refugee education;
  • black history;
  • museum and heritage education; the teaching of history.

He currently supervises a number of students including the following:

  • Izzy Mohammed - Public archives, Representation and Integration in Post-War, Multicultural Urban Contexts: Birmingham and Manchester
  • Alison Laitner - Discovering Childrens’ Voices and Experiences; Changes from family to institutional care ...

Dr Leslie Fesenmyer

Dr Leslie Fesenmyer

Associate Professor in Social Anthropology and African Studies

Department of African Studies and Anthropology

I welcome enquiries from students interested in the anthropology of migration and diasporas; religion, particularly Pentecostalism; and kinship and care.

Professor Matt Houlbrook

Professor Matt Houlbrook

Professor of Cultural History

Department of History

I offer PhD supervision across the cultural history of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in areas relating to my own research interests: histories of gender and sexuality, culture and self-fashioning, urban history, and Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. Feel free to get in touch if you’re interested in discussing potential projects. I'm currently or have recently co-supervised projects including women's sexual autonomy and desire ...

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.