We welcome applications for PhD and MSc positions in both experimental and theoretical particle physics. You can find out more about the different research areas using the Research pages on this website. We typically take on 15-20 new PhD students each year.

Entrance is very competitive and most successful applicants have a first-class degree or the equivalent. In exceptional cases, the requirement for a first-class or strong upper-second class undergraduate degree with honours can be alternatively demonstrated by a graduate master’s degree or substantial directly-related professional or research experience.

The supervision allocation is the responsibility of the admissions coordinators. It is not always possible to accommodate the preferences of incoming graduate students to work with a particular member of staff. 

For informal enquiries please email the admission coordinators: Evelina Gersabeck (Evelina.Gersabeck@manchester.ac.uk) and Darren Price (Darren.Price@manchester.ac.uk) for experimental particle physics, and Eleni Vryonidou (Eleni.Vryonidou@manchester.ac.uk) for theoretical particle physics

Scholarships and funding opportunities

In addition to the baseline funding the group receives from STFC and other research grants, there are several other opportunities students can consider. Please note that these schemes have a deadline and we need several weeks to process your application. For STFC funding we have a soft deadline end of January, meaning all applications by this point will be considered and reviewed. Applications submitted thereafter will be reviewed (subject to available funding).

Outstanding students are encouraged to apply for the competitive PhD scholarships (such as the President’s Doctoral Scholar award, the Dean’s Doctoral Scholarship)

There are dedicated scholarships for applicants looking for an enhanced teaching component of their PhD programme: the Postgraduate Research Teaching Associate (PGRTA) Scholarships. The duration of the PhD programme is correspondingly extended.

Outstanding applicants from China are encouraged to apply for the China Scholarship Council (CSC) Postgraduate Scholarships.

Scholarships also exist from the underrepresented parts of the community. One such scholarship is the Bell Burnell Graduate Scholarship. There is also a Departmental scholarship.

If you have other routes of funding e.g. Commonwealth scholarship, national funding schemes or self-funding, please get in touch and we will discuss these opportunities with you.

For all scholarships, please get in touch with a potential supervisor to discuss your application. If you do not know any of the potential supervisors, please contact the admission coordinators. You will also have to submit an application through the link. This is the starting point for all applications.

How to apply

For MSc by Research and PhD placements with the particle physics group, you can apply online.

The application form will ask for a “research proposal”, we do not require a detailed proposal, please use this to describe which topics and/or projects you’re interested in applying for (few sentences or stating the research field/ the experiment(s) of interest is sufficient; no preference for a particular experiment is also fine.). You are welcome to contact an academic to discuss potential projects before making your application.

The application form will ask for a “named supervisor”: if you are not sure, please put down the names of the admission coordinators.

You will see the full entry requirements and the documents needed. Please select PhD in physics, then select “particle physics” in the next step.

Disclaimer: usually it takes at least several days for the applications to be processed by the admissions office. Once you have applied please contact the admission coordinators, and send the ID of your application and you can send your documents for faster processing.

The details of the MSc programme can be found here.

Interviews

Our main interview period is February/ March with the first offers being made before the end of March. However our admissions process continues until September. All applicants will receive a notification of a positive or negative outcome (if you have not heard your application is still being considered but you are welcome to inquire).