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 “law society”

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 Atina Krajewska

Professor Atina Krajewska

Professor of Law and Birmingham Fellow
Head of Research

Birmingham Law School

Reproductive Rights
Global, International, and Transnational Health Law
Human Rights and Health
Medical and Health Law
Comparative Law



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 ...

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 ...


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 Jean V. McHale

Professor of Health Care Law

Birmingham Law School

Health, Health Care Law and Social Care Law in particular,

Health Law and the EU and the impacts of Brexit
Covid 19 and health and social care
Health Care Privacy and Confidentiality
Legal Regulation of Cosmetic procedures
Legal Regulation of Use of Human Material
Legal Regulation of Clinical Research






Professor Lorraine Talbot

Professor Lorraine Talbot

Professor of Company Law and Company Law in Context

Birmingham Law School

I am available to supervise in the following areas. Business History, corporate law theory, critical approaches to shareholder rights and shareholder centred governance, the socio-economic and political impact of corporate activities, growth, degrowth and corporate sustainability, the visual arts and corporations, corporations and labour, corporations and social progress, business human rights, feminism, gender and corporations and the political economy of companies.

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 ...

Professor Karen McAuliffe

Professor Karen McAuliffe

Professor in Law and Language
Birmingham Fellow

Birmingham Law School

Professor McAuliffe is currently committed to work 100% of her time on the European Research Council project ‘Law and Language at the European Court of Justice’, but welcomes research proposals for future doctoral and postdoctoral research in the following areas:

The relationship between language and law
Multilingual legal systems
Legal translation/Institutional translation and its impact on law
Dynamics of language/culture/multilingualism in European Union Institutions
Proposals for empirical research projects and ...





Dr Argyro Karanasiou

Dr Argyro Karanasiou

Assistant Professor in Law and Innovation

Birmingham Law School

Dr Karanasiou’ s principal research interests are in regulatory design of emerging technologies, particularly looking at the promotion of autonomy in times of rapid automation within and beyond the digital sphere. Argyro welcomes enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in pursuing PhD study under her supervision.

Professor Rilka Dragneva-Lewers

Professor Rilka Dragneva-Lewers

Professor of International Legal Studies
Associate Dean Âé¶¹¾«Ñ¡ Law School

Birmingham Law School

I am interested in supervising high quality postgraduate research projects in the following areas:

Preferential trade agreements and regional blocs; Comparative regional economic integration law; Eurasian economic integration
EU Neighbourhood Policy and external relations with Eastern Europe and Eurasia; EU-Russia relations
Legal reform; Law and Development; External promotion of rule of law and good governance
Comparative Corporate Governance




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.

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 ...