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



Professor Andrzej Pacek

Emeritus Professor in Multiphase Systems

School of Chemical Engineering

  • Simultaneous characterisation of morphology and rheology of complex multiphase products
  • Effect of catalyst particles on bubble size and overall reaction rate in mixed solvents in heterogeneous reactors at elevated pressure and temperature
  • Concurrent Product Process design using rotor stator devices
  • Solid/gas/liquid interfaces in multiphase catalitical reactors
  • Lignosulphonate as a source of fine chemicals

Dr Jimmy Packham

Dr Jimmy Packham

Associate Professor in North American Literature

Department of English Literature

I would be delighted to supervise postgraduate work and research projects, and invite expressions of interest, in any of the following areas:

- Nineteenth-century American literature – especially Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Ambrose Bierce, Charles Chesnutt, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana Jr.

- The Gothic – I have research specialisms in American Gothic, maritime ...



Professor Ruth Page

Professor Ruth Page

Professor of Applied Linguistics
Program Director, BA Digital Media and Communications

Department of Linguistics and Communication

I am always looking for students with exciting projects and am particularly interested in supervising projects which incorporate discourse analysis and narrative analysis, focus on data from spoken or social media contexts, which include multimodal materials along with verbal data, and/or explore topics in language and gender. I have supervised PhD projects in the broad fields of

Discourse analysis
Critical discourse analysis
Computer-mediated communication



Professor Will Palin

Professor Will Palin

Professor in Biomedical Materials Science
Director of Research

School of Dentistry

Dr Palin's current research themes for doctoral supervision include:

Materials chemistry (investigating polymerisation efficiencies of photoactive biomaterials and mproving photoinitiator systems for dental and novel medical applications
Mechanical properties of biomaterials (mechanical response and fatigue of resin composites, characteristics of bulk resin-ceramic hybrid materials, and reliability statistics for brittle materials)
Materials science-biological interface (effects of anti-bacterial additives on polymerisation kinetics and cellular behaviour and wavelength/irradiance effects on photoinitiator efficiency and ...



Dr Claire Palles

Dr Claire Palles

Associate Professor

Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences

Claire supervises a PhD student, a clinical academic fellow and several medical students.  She would be interested in hearing from people with either a scientific or clinical background that would be keen to join the group.

Dr Isobel Palmer

Lecturer in Russian

Department of Modern Languages

• Russian and Russophone poetry (19th-21st Century)
• Russian Formalism and literary theory
• Comparative modernisms, world literature, post-colonialism
• (Modernist) performance culture
• Intersections between literature and visual art/music



Dr Gu Pang

Dr Gu Pang

Associate Professor in Procurement and Operations Management

Department of Management

Gu welcomes PhD applicants who are interested in: machine learning, blockchain technology, remanufacturing, reverse logistics, closed-loop supply chains, food value chains, optimisation. 

For informal discussion, please forward your email to g.pang.1@bham.ac.uk

Dr Julian Pänke

Dr Julian Pänke

Associate Professor in European Politics
Head of Education, School of Government

Department of Political Science and International Studies

  • European Union foreign policies
  • Central & Eastern European foreign policies (Germany, Poland, Slovakia)
  • European Neighbourhood Policy

Dr Anna Papoutsi

Dr Anna Papoutsi

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

  • Yunchong Bao

Mr Tommaso Pardi

PhD Student

School of Metallurgy and Materials

  • Rustam Stolkin
  • Amir Ghalamzan

Dr Dhruv Parekh

Dr Dhruv Parekh

Associate Professor in Critical Care and Respiratory Medicine
Director of NIHR/Wellcome Birmingham Clinical Research Facility
Acute Care Research Theme Lead

Department of Inflammation and Ageing

Dhruv is interested in supervising doctoral research students who are interested in research in the field of respiratory, peri-operative medicine and critical care.

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Dr Dhruv Parekh directly, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email mds-gradschool@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings.

Professor Jo Parish

Professor Jo Parish

Professor of Tumour Virology

Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences

Professor Jo Parish has supervised more than 20 postgraduate students in areas of virology and cancer biology. Many of these students now hold posts at prestigious national and international research institutes.

Jo is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

  • Regulation of HPV gene expression control
  • Regulation of HPV replication and persistence
  • Regulation of HBV gene expression control

If you are interested in studying any of these ...