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 “environmental history”

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 ...

Dr Jonathan Willis

Dr Jonathan Willis

Associate Professor in Early Modern History

Department of History

I am interested in supervising research projects on most aspects of the social, cultural and religious history of early modern England, especially in areas relating to the reformation, theology, popular religion and belief, religious practices, puritanism, parish religion, music, the material culture of the parish church, and histories of emotion and mental illness.

I have been/am currently involved in supervising MA dissertations, MRes theses and PhD theses on the following topics: ...

Dr Hiroki Shin

Dr Hiroki Shin

Associate Professor in History of Energy and Environmental Humanities
125th Anniversary Fellow

Department of History

Dr Shin welcomes enquiries about potential postgraduate projects on all aspects of energy history, environmental history and modern economic history.

Dr Simon Jackson

Dr Simon Jackson

Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History

Department of History

I offer postgraduate supervision in the colonial, international and global history of modern France and its empire, on empire in the twentieth century Mediterranean and in the comparative history of European empire.

I currently supervise or co-supervise several PhD students:

Gemma Jennings (Patriarchy and Poverty? A Transnational Analysis of the Social Implications of the Oil Industry between France and Algeria)
Tomoki Yamada (The League of Nations Mandates System as a ...




Dr Shirley Ye

Dr Shirley Ye

Lecturer in Asian History

Department of History

Previous MA thesis topics that I have co-supervised include Sino-British economic relations and a comparative study of Roman imperial cults and Japanese overseas shrines.

I welcome inquiries from students on PhD supervision on China, East Asia, and the wider world in any time period. Current PhD topics I am co-supervising include postcolonial urban architecture and memory in Hong Kong (funded by AHRC Midlands 3 Cities Consortium), and the public history ...

Dr Rosie Day

Dr Rosie Day

Associate Professor in Environment and Society

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences


Dr Day welcomes enquiries from prospective doctoral researchers in her areas of interest:

environmental justice / energy justice
energy poverty
energy geography
environmental knowledges
older age, especially in relation to environmental or energy issues












Professor John Kenneth Colbourne

Professor John Kenneth Colbourne

Professor, Chair of Environmental Genomics
Director, Centre for Environmental Research and Justice (CERJ)

School of Biosciences

The Environmental Genomics group is recruiting postgraduate students to pursue PhD studies in the following research areas: 

  • Molecular mechanisms of developmental plasticity & acclimation 
  • Pioneering the use of genomic signatures for environmental health protection 
  • Forecasting environmental health threats on populations using Daphnia egg bank genomics 
  • Biostatistical and computational methods of analyzing high dimensional data and gene networks 
  • Population genomics 
  • Heritable basis of condition-associated molecular responses and adaptive tolerance to stress ...

Dr David Smith

Dr David Smith

Senior Lecturer in Environmental Archaeology

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

Past PhD students supervised by David have worked on analogue studies of the plants and insects from hay meadows (with Dr Pam Grinter) and the Palaeoentomology of estuarine deposits at Goldcliff, Gwent (with Dr Emma Tetlow).

At present, David is co-supervising the PhDs of:

Shelagh Norton - who is working on the archaeology and the past environments of the Berth Hillfort, Shropshire and other ‘marshforts’ in the British Isles.
Zena ...




Professor Henry Chapman

Professor Henry Chapman

Professor of Archaeology

Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

Henry can supervise postgraduate study in the areas of later prehistory, wetland archaeology, landscape archaeology and the application of digital and spatial technologies within heritage.

He currently supervises students researching digital approaches to conflict archaeology, the landscape archaeology of European bog bodies, predictive modelling of centres of power in Bronze Age Anatolia using GIS, valuing archives in the 21st century, the landscape archaeology of Neolithic causewayed enclosures, and the archaeology ...

Professor Dominique Moran

Professor Dominique Moran

Professor in Carceral Geography

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Carceral Geography

Dr Archie Dunn

Teaching Fellow in Byzantine Archaeology

Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies

  • Late Roman and Byzantine archaeology; archaeology of the later medieval Aegean world
  • Regional histories and economic history of the Byzantine world

Find out more - our PhD Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡.

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 ...

Professor Nathan Waddell

Professor Nathan Waddell

Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature

Department of English Literature

My work for the foreseeable future will be concerned with projects on the lives and writings of Wyndham Lewis and George Orwell. As a result, I’m currently best placed to supervise postgraduate research on these figures and their contexts/contemporaries.

Dr Kelly Wade

Dr Kelly Wade

Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology

School of Psychology

Current ClinPsyD research projects:

  • Exploring pica and its correlates in people with intellectual disability, what separates it from other behaviours that challenge? (co-supervised by Professor Caroline Richards)
  • An evaluation of an identity based post-diagnosis therapeutic group for autistic young people (co-supervised by Dr Charlie Bamford)

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 Alex Wadley

Dr Alex Wadley

Lecturer in Exercise Metabolism
Academic Director, Cellular Health and Metabolism Facility

School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences

As of September 2021, Alex supervises 2 PhD students (funded by BBSRC and Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education) and 2 MSc by Research students.

Alex welcomes applications from potential PhD or MSc by research students on topics relating to his research interests. Please see some current PhD projects available below:

https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/evaluating-the-effect-of-exercise-on-immune-driven-disease-activity-in-individuals-with-type-1-diabetes/?p133757

https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/investigating-the-utility-of-exercise-to-enhance-the-yield-of-haemopoietic-stem-and-progenitor-cells-in-peripheral-blood/?p133759

Dr Emma Wagstaff

Dr Emma Wagstaff

Associate Professor of French

Department of Modern Languages

I currently co-supervise doctoral researchers working on early modern, modern and contemporary French writing, connections between literature and visual art, and Caribbean and African literature. I would be very glad to hear from students wishing to pursue Masters or doctoral research in the following areas:

modern and contemporary poetry
poetry and translation
comparative topics in modern literature
poetic form and political engagement
French writers and art
word-image interactions.

I also ...








Dr Abdul Wahid

Dr Abdul Wahid

Assistant Professor

School of Computer Science

Extensive experience in supervising PhD and MPhil students, as well as Undergraduate student research projects as well.

Dr Martin Wählisch

Dr Martin Wählisch

Associate Professor of Transformative Technologies, Innovation and Global Affairs

School of Government

Dr. Wählisch is happy to discuss research proposals related to PeaceTech and digital diplomacy (AI, VR/XR), Science Diplomacy, GovTech and digital transformation, and futures thinking in public affairs.

 

 

Dr Benjamin Wakerley

Dr Benjamin Wakerley

Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer
Consultant Neurologist
Director Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ Headache Centre

Department of Metabolism and Systems Science

Dr Wakerley is currently co-supervising a PhD student looking at migraine in pregnancy.

Dr Crayton Walker

Dr Crayton Walker

Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics

Department of Linguistics and Communication

Dr Walker is interested in supervising doctoral research in the areas of:

Collocation and other phraseological aspects of English
The pedagogic application of corpora
Vocabulary and its teaching



Dr Ryan Walker

Dr Ryan Walker

Assistant Professor in Clinical Pharmacy

School of Pharmacy

Dr Walker is interested in supervising projects in the following areas:

  • Knowledge exchange and capacity building for pharmacy practice and research.
  • Health and medicines inequity.
  • Pharmacovigilance
  • Antimicrobial resistance

Professor Ivan Wall

Professor Ivan Wall

Professor in Regenerative Medicine

Department of Immunology and Immunotherapy

Ivan supervises PhD students working on stem cell culture processes and exosome production.

Dr Sarah Wall

Dr Sarah Wall

Practitioner Tutor

School of Education

She has previously supervised the following doctoral level work: the views of men in primary school teaching; male mental health; universal design for learning in SEND; the lived experience of a visually impaired lecturer; the lived experience of a care leaver with SEND; careers advice for individuals with SEND.