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 ...

Dr Mahmoud Zakarneh

Dr Mahmoud Zakarneh

Assistant Professor in Marketing (Dubai)

Dubai Campus

Postgraduate (MSc) research project - Thesis supervisor (15 students– Postgraduate (MSc))

Professor Javier Zamora

Professor Javier Zamora

Professor of Biostatistics in Maternal and Perinatal Health

Department of Metabolism and Systems Science

Co-supervised (Completed)

  • PhD B al Wattar - (2013-2017) - Improving health outcomes for pregnant women with metabolic risk factors
  • PhD E Rogozinska (2014-2017)  Diet and/or physical activity based interventions for antenatal weight management
  • PhD Daru J (2016-2019) - Impact of maternal anaemia on health outcomes in high- and low-income countries
  • MD S Sobhy (2015-2017) - Risks of adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes in low and middle-income countries (LMIC)

Co-supervision (in

...

Dr Sotirios Zartaloudis

Dr Sotirios Zartaloudis

Associate Professor in Comparative European Politics

Department of Political Science and International Studies

Dr Sotirios Zartaloudis is happy to accept PhD students in the areas of his research interests broadly conceived (see relevant section).

Interested candidates are welcome to contact him with ideas and a draft proposal but any applications are handled centrally by the University Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ and POLSIS.

Dr Eder Zavala

Dr Eder Zavala

Assistant Professor in Mathematics

Department of Metabolism and Systems Science

  • Currently supervising 1 PhD student. Contact me for informal enquiries about PhD supervision
  • Regular supervision of MSc projects in Applied Mathematics and Biomedical Sciences (contact me for enquiries).

Dr Eder Zavala

Dr Eder Zavala

Assistant Professor in Mathematics

Department of Metabolism and Systems Science

  • Currently supervising 1 PhD student. Contact me for informal enquiries about PhD supervision
  • Regular supervision of MSc projects in Applied Mathematics and Biomedical Sciences (contact me for enquiries).

Dr Yuanzhu Zhan

Dr Yuanzhu Zhan

Associate Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management

Department of Management

Yuanzhu welcomes applicants who have an excellent academic background and a strong ambition to work in the academic (in technology-driven innovation, business analytics and sustainable supply chain areas) for his/her future career to apply for PhD under his supervision.

Dr Le Zhang

Dr Le Zhang

Assistant Professor in Digital Healthcare Engineering

Department of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering

Dr Le Zhang is looking for PhD students and visiting scholars with strong motivation to work on reliable machine learning and medical image analysis, especially PhD students with CSC’s support potentially. Please feel free to email Dr Zhang if you are interested.

  • Foundation models for generalizable disease detection from retinal images
  • Generative AI for Medical Imaging
  • Multimodal learning for population health studies
  • Computational imaging methods for population image

Dr Lei Zhang

Dr Lei Zhang

Associate Professor
Director of Postgraduate Research

School of Psychology

PhD students: Students interested in working with Dr Zhang should email him to discuss potential funding opportunities. Current funding schemes include MRC-AIM, BBSRC-MIBTP, and CSC.

Postdoc researchers: Excellent and motivated postdoc researchers are welcome to contact Dr Zhang to discuss potential projects and funding opportunities (both national and international).

Liyun Zhang

Liyun Zhang

Research Fellow in Economics

The Department of Economics

Qinqin Xiong (2021-  ): UoB full scholarship

Dr Teng Zhang

Dr Teng Zhang

Assistant Professor in Experimental Physics

Supervision of PhDs in gravitational-wave instrumental research.

Dr Tongtong Zhang

Dr Tongtong Zhang

Assistant Professor

School of Chemical Engineering

Dr Tongtong Zhang is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

  • Thermal energy (heat and cold) storage
  • Thermo-mechanical energy storage
  • Cryogenic energy storage (liquid air energy storage, liquid hydrogen storage etc.)
  • Industrial decarbonisation
  • Process and system simulation and optimization

If you are interested in studying any of these subject areas please contact Dr Tongtong Zhang on the contact details above.

Professor Xiao-Ping Zhang

Professor Xiao-Ping Zhang

Chair in Electrical Power Systems
Director of Smart Grid, Birmingham Energy Institute
Co-Director, Birmingham Energy Storage Centre (sponsored by EPSRC)

Department of Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering

Xiao-Ping is interested in supervising doctoral research students in the following areas:

  • Electrical Power Systems
  • Smart Grids
  • Power Electronic Control – FACTS and VSC HVDC
  • Renewable Generation Control
  • Integration of PHEVs into Power Grids
  • Smart Metering, Wide Area Awareness and Self-healing Power Grid
  • Energy Markets and Game Theory

If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Xiao-Ping on the contact details above, or for any ...