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 “human rights”

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 Ben Warwick

Dr Ben Warwick

Reader in Human Rights Law
Head of Planning and Strategy

Birmingham Law School

Ben Warwick is interested in supervising research in the following areas:

Economic and social rights
International human rights and resources
Rights enforcement



Professor Mohammad (Shahab) Shahabuddin

Professor Mohammad (Shahab) Shahabuddin

Professor of International Law & Human Rights

Birmingham Law School

Shahab is happy to supervise postgraduate research students in the areas of International Law and International Human Rights Law. He has specific interest in supervising PhD students in the field of international legal history, international legal theory, third world approaches to international law, ethnic minority rights and ethnic conflicts, and right to self-determination.

Dr Damian Gonzalez-Salzberg

Dr Damian Gonzalez-Salzberg

Associate Professor
Head of Planning and Strategy

Birmingham Law School

Damian is keen to supervise postgraduate research students in the following areas:

International and Regional Protection of Human Rights
The work of international courts
Human Rights Research Methods
LGBTQI Rights
Feminist and Queer Legal Theories





Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge

Interdisciplinary Chair of Humanities and Human Rights

Department of English Literature

• Interdisciplinary Human Rights and Refugee Studies
• Modern, Contemporary, and Postcolonial literatures
• Hannah Arendt and Critical Theory



Dr Shaimaa Abdelkarim

Dr Shaimaa Abdelkarim

Assistant Professor in Law (Postcolonial Legal Theory and Critical Race Studies)

Birmingham Law School

Shaimaa welcomes doctoral supervision in these areas:
• Third World Approaches to International Law
• Law and Development (specifically through a postcolonial lens)
• Critical Approaches to Human Rights
• Alternatives to Human Rights Practices
• Law, Gender and Sexuality (especially in black feminist thought)
• Law and Abolitionist Praxis







Professor Fiona de Londras

Professor Fiona de Londras

Director of Research, College of Arts and Law
Barber Professor of Jurisprudence

Birmingham Law School

Professor de Londras currently supervises students working on (national, comparative, and international) public law and on topics as diverse as the conceptualisation of security in law, the future of the ECtHR, postcoloniality and nationality law, migrants' rights, and the regulation of abortion information. Her former doctoral students now hold academic posts at leading law schools around the world, in practice, and in regulatory and policy bodies. She has a strong ...

Dr Rishika Sahgal

Dr Rishika Sahgal

Assistant Professor in Law

Birmingham Law School

Rishika welcomes doctoral supervision in these areas:
• International and comparative human rights law
• Socio-economic rights
• Decolonization of law and justice
• Critical approaches to human rights





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 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 Alan Greene

Dr Alan Greene

Reader in Constitutional Law and Human Rights
Deputy Head of Research

Birmingham Law School

Constituent power
States of emergency
Counter-terrorism
Human rights


Dr Silvana Tapia Tapia

Dr Silvana Tapia Tapia

Associate Professor in Law

Birmingham Law School

Silvana is happy to supervise projects at the intersections between Criminal Law, Gender, and Human Rights. In particular, projects that aim to develop:

Anticolonial and/or feminist critiques of prisons and the criminal legal system.
Anticolonial and/or feminist critiques of mainstream human rights law and advocacy.
New knowledge on the links between penal violence and social reproduction.
New knowledge on feminist and anti-carceral social movements.




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 ...