As a postgraduate PhD student you will need to pay annual tuition fees to the University for the research programme that you are studying. If you are studying an iPhD in Web Science, the first year's tuition fees will be the same as our MSc in Web Science and subsequent years will be annual PhD fees.
You can find the latest postgraduate research fees information on the University's main website. Please note that University of Southampton final-year students and alumni are eligible for a 10 per cent discount on postgraduate course fees.
In addition to tuition fees, you will also need to consider other expenses such as living costs, accommodation fees and study materials. However, there are various funding schemes available that could pay your fees and provide a stipend to cover living expenses during your PhD.
When you use the online application form to apply for an ECS PhD, there is a section under General Information for you to fill in about funding. Please use the information below to decide how you plan to fund your PhD and then tell us about this on the application form.
There are four main ways that PhDs are funded here at ECS (see below). Whilst we accept PhD applications throughout the year, these funding schemes all have associated deadlines and so we encourage you to apply as early as possible to maximise your chances of securing funding.
The student pays the annual fees and covers living costs for the duration of the PhD.
For UK and EU students, we have a number of Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) Research Studentships to award each year from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). These studentships pay tuition fees and, for UK students (and some eligible EU students) they also provide a tax-free maintenance grant (stipend) to cover living expenses for three years. For students starting in September 2017, the stipend is £14,553. These studentships are awarded on a competitive basis by ECS after an offer of a PhD place has been made. If you would like to be considered for one of these studentships, please indicate this in the funding section of the online application form. Click here to check whether you meet the EPSRC eligibility criteria for a DPT studentship by consulting the EPSRC guidance.
In addition to our DTP studentships, there are several other funding schemes to which academic supervisors can apply to provide financial support during your PhD. Please contact your proposed supervisor for more information.
If you are an EU or international student, we offer a range of scholarship and funding schemes with our external partners. There may also be funding opportunities offered by organisations in your home country or other alternative funding available to which you can apply. These schemes usually require you to submit a separate application to the external funding body. If you plan to apply for one of these funding schemes then please give us details of this on the online PhD application form (under General Information - Funding).
We offer a number of PhD projects with a title, supervisor, remit and funding already in place. These may have been established through collaborations with industry, external partners or they may have been provided through one of several Centres for Doctoral Training in which we participate. Details of current PhD studentships on offer with funding attached are advertised on the our Job Vacancies page.
I was supervised by Professor Wendy Hall and Dr Su White and, because my research interests were multi-disciplinary, I was lucky to have an advisor from the School of Education: Professor Alison Fuller. My research interests are quite unusual in ECS, but very necessary. My PhD investigated how the perception of technology careers dissuades females from choosing computing courses at higher education. My PhD research continues to be a stepping stone to my overall ambition, which is to empower people (not just women!) to believe that they can contribute to an industry like computing and make a real difference.