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 “property law”

Dr Sophie Boyron

Dr Sophie Boyron

Associate Professor

Birmingham Law School

Constitutional law
Administrative law
European law
Comparative law

Current doctoral supervision:

Sophie Boyron is currently supervising three doctoral students undertaking research in the following areas:

Institutional autonomy and the United Kingdom Supreme Court
External participation in EU decision-making process through the EU established instruments
The jurisprudence of mediation














Professor Muireann Quigley

Professor Muireann Quigley

Professor of Law, Medicine, and Technology

Birmingham Law School

Biolaw, property in the body and biomaterials, the use of the behavioural sciences in law and policy, (bio)technologies and law.

Dr Walters Nsoh

Dr Walters Nsoh

Associate Professor in Law
Programme Director, Online LLM in Energy and Environmental Law

Birmingham Law School

Dr Nsoh is happy to supervise within the following broad areas:

Innovative approaches such as conservation covenants, payment for ecosystem services and biodiversity offsets in conservation
Biodiversity and nature conservation law
Property (land) rights, land use, land tenure and livelihoods
Forest ownership and sustainability
Regulation of natural resources
Ecosystem services
Indigenous rights







Dr Gavin Byrne

Dr Gavin Byrne

Associate Professor

Birmingham Law School

Dr Bryne is interested in supervising doctoral research on:

Jurisprudence
The application of other disciplines of study to the study of Law (philosophy, literary theory, economics etc)
Aspects of property and intellectual property law



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





Dr Chen Zhu

Dr Chen Zhu

Associate Professor

Birmingham Law School

Dr Zhu considers postgraduate research proposals falling into the following areas:

- Historical and Theoretical Aspects of Copyright Law
- Legal Construction of Authorship
- Music Copyright Law
- Software Related Intellectual Property Issues




Professor Joy Porter

Professor Joy Porter

Professor of Indigenous and Environmental History
University Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ 125th Anniversary Chair
Principal Investigator, Treatied Spaces Research Group

Department of History

Professor Porter has a strong track record helping ECR and PGR colleagues advance their careers. She has supported a significant number to achieve positions in U.K. and U.S. Universities. She has also supported students and ECRs to attract fellowships, travel awards and other funding from the AHRC, Fulbright US-UK, government bodies and North American and European universities.
She welcomes PGR enquiries linked to:
Global Indigenous Environmental History, Culture and Literature ...

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 ...

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 ...