Join our vibrant and supportive PhD community.
Studying for a PhD is a highly rewarding and challenging process.
As part of a research community and with individual supervision you will become a leading expert in your area.
All of our academic staff are active researchers, who are at the cutting edge of their research field. We have an outstanding reputation for research in our specialist areas.
You are encouraged to explore our research communities and contact the academic whose interests match your own.
Our research is divided into four themes. Each research community is led by staff who are at the forefront of their fields.
How do we develop an understanding of the world around us? We look at cognitive, social, emotional and language development from before birth through to adolescence.
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What are the fundamental cognitive processes behind language, learning, memory, and attention? How does our understanding of cognition impact society?
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How does the brain respond to different environments and govern cognitive function? We research how humans understand and process the world around us.
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How do we develop definitions of morality or trust, and how do they affect our emotions in social interaction or decision making?
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Each year the Psychology Department offers several fully-funded PhD studentships (commencing the following October), as well as opportunities to apply for other studentships via the ESRC's North West Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP).
In all cases, we are looking for academically excellent students, who are passionate about doing research and have an exciting project they want to pursue.
For more information on funding, see the Funding Opportunities section.
For more information on the application process, please visit our Current Opportunities page.
To begin the process, you will need to find a PhD Supervisor whose research interests align with your own. You will need to contact them to discuss your application.
We will require a research proposal on the area/s you are interested in joining us to study. This proposal will be used to help us determine who will be the most suitable potential academic supervisor for your research.
This step is the starting point to find a suitable supervisor who will then, if interested, contact you for a phone interview. In this interview, you will discuss the proposal and intended research, meaning your plan is not your permanent topic for your PhD studies and open to negotiation. Past guidelines have suggested the following:
We recommend that you submit your research interests and the PhD Admissions Tutor can pass your application onto the most relevant and available supervisor.
To apply, create an account on the Applying for postgraduate study website.
Here you can submit applications for the programme(s) which you wish to study, upload supporting documentation and provide us with information about referees. You may apply for all our postgraduate programmes using this method.
If you are a current Lancaster student or have recently graduated from Lancaster, we can reduce the amount of information that you will need to provide. You will need to offer only one reference and will not need to supply your Lancaster degree transcript. We will also pre-fill your details, ready for you to check.
If you use the Postgraduate Applications website, then you will be advised which documentation you need to upload or send to us. We can automatically contact your referees once you have submitted your application if you ask us to.
The supporting documentation screen will provide you with a list of required documents. These will usually include:
Most of our funded PhD studentships are advertised in November and December prior to a start date in October the following year. To be considered for these studentships, please make sure to apply by mid-January/early February (see for exact application deadlines under ‘Current opportunities’). Some funded opportunities will be advertised separately, at varying times of the year. These are usually associated with a grant awarded to a member of staff and advertise a PhD position to work on that particular grant. These will be advertised under ‘Other funding opportunities’ as and when they come up. If you are pursuing a self-funded application, we strongly encourage you to aim for an October start date and apply at least 6 months before. An October start date allows you to make the best use of Department, Faculty and College induction programmes and will make sure you settle in as quickly as possible. Under exceptional circumstances, we will consider an alternative start date. Please contact the postgraduate.psychology@lancaster.ac.uk for further guidance if you have questions about this.
Each year, the Department offers several PhD studentships, as well as opportunities to support applications for studentships via the ESRC’s North West Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP).
Studentships typically provide funding for 3 or 3.5 years and cover fees, a maintenance stipend and access to a Research Training and Support Grant. Additionally, all new PhD students receive a laptop with a monitor and workstation.
Some studentships cover fees for applicants with a ‘Home’ fee status only, while other studentships cover fees for applicants with a ‘Home’ or an ‘International’ fee status.
More information on how the University determines an applicants’ fee status can be found on our Fee Status pages.
The Department supports applications for studentships via the Economic and Social Research Council’s North West Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP), which include standard studentships and CASE studentships (for collaboration with a non-higher education partner). NWSSDTP studentships are open to both applicants with a ‘Home’ fees or an ‘International’ fee status. However, across the DTP, no more than 30% of studentships can be allocated to applicants with an ‘International’ fee status. Within the NWSSDTP, applicants can apply for funding for a master's degree in combination with doctoral studies (1+3) or for funding to support their doctoral studies (+3). The NWSSDTP currently supports several studentships ring-fenced for students from a Global Majority background. The ESRC has also awarded the NWSSDTP a number of ‘steered’ studentships in the ‘priority areas’ of advanced quantitative methods, longitudinal studies (using ESRC datasets) and interdisciplinary work. Please visit our ‘Current Opportunities’ for information on how to apply via our Department.
Please see under ‘Current Opportunities’ for information on the application process.
The Department of Psychology at Lancaster University regularly has a studentship funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council available. This usually is a studentship for PhD funding (+3). It provides full tuition fees, a maintenance stipend (at the general UKRI rate) and access to a research training support grant. These studentships are open to both applicants with a ‘Home’ fee or an ‘International’ fee status. However, across the DTP, no more than 30% of studentships can be allocated to applicants with an ‘International’ fee status.
Currently not available for 2026/2027 start.
The Department of Psychology at Lancaster University usually has one or more studentships funded by the Faculty of Science and Technology available. The award is for PhD funding (+3) and provides tuition fees at the ‘Home/UK’ rate, a maintenance stipend in accordance with UKRI rates, and access to a grant towards research training support. Applicants with an ‘International’ fee status must fund the difference between Home/UK and International fees themselves, if successful. As a department, we particularly encourage applications to work with early career staff. This year these include: Dr Carly Anderson, Dr Abigail Fiske, Dr Alice Milne, Dr Alice Rees, and Dr Heather Shaw. Applications to work with these members of staff are weighted preferentially at the short-listing stage for this studentship. Please see under ‘Current Opportunities’ for information on the application process.
Please see under ‘Current Opportunities’ for information on the application process.
There are mulitple opportuinites available. Please scroll to see all available opportunities.
Position 1: Why are autistic people more likely to suffer from gender dysphoria?
Supervisors: Katie Alcock – Developmental/Cognitive Psychology; Gabriel Wallin - Statistics (School of Mathematical Sciences)
Project description: This project combines Cognitive Neuropsychology and Statistics to look at what makes autistic people more likely to suffer from gender dysphoria. We will examine cognitive and social features of autistic people’s lives and use latent class analysis to see if certain aspects of autistic thinking and social life might influence this link. We will also look at whether there might be more than one pathway between the two. The project could look at either young adults or at children at the point of entering secondary school, depending on the candidate’s interests.
General eligibility criteria: Applicants would normally be expected to hold a minimum of a UK Honours degree at 2:1 level or equivalent in a relevant degree course.
Project specific criteria: The ideal candidate will have a background in cognitive science, Psychology, or a similar healthcare or biomedical background. The project has a strong quantitative component, and candidates are therefore expected to have a solid foundation in statistics or quantitative methods or clear willingness to develop these skills. They will have a strong background in statistics and an interest in expanding their knowledge of different statistical methods. If the candidate does not have a Psychology degree, they can strengthen their Psychology knowledge through auditing our MSc modules.
Studentship funding: A tax-free stipend will be paid at the standard UKRI rate; £20,780 in 2025/26. This is a fully funded studentship of 3.5 years for UK/Home students.
Enquiries: Interested applicants are welcome to get in touch to learn more about the PhD project. Please contact Katie Alcock k.j.alcock@lancaster.ac.uk for more information.
Dates
Deadline for candidate applications: 23 March 2026
Provisional Interview Date: April 2026
Start Date: October 2026
Further reading:
Kallitsounaki, A., & Williams, D. M. (2023). Autism Spectrum Disorder and Gender Dysphoria/Incongruence. A systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Autism and Developmental disorders, 53(8), 3103–3117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-022-05517-y
Hendriks, O., Wei, Y., Warrier, V., & Richards, G. (2022). Autistic Traits, Empathizing–Systemizing, and Gender Diversity. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 51(4), 2077–2089. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02251-x
Ma, Y., Ushakova, A., Cain, K., & Wallin, G. (2025). A statistical framework for dynamic cognitive diagnosis in digital learning environments. arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.14531.
Application process
Position 2: Curiosity and Wellbeing in Children
Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship to study curiosity and wellbeing in school children in the Department of Psychology, Lancaster University funded by the Leverhulme Trust as part of the Curiosity Battery research project.
Supervisory team: Dr Marina Bazhydai (Lancaster), Dr Lily FitzGibbon (Stirling), Dr Amy Atkinson (Lancaster)
PhD project description: While the importance of curiosity in development is often assumed, systematic research into its value for children's academic and well-being outcomes is lacking. This is largely due to the paucity of reliable measures of curiosity in childhood incorporating different theoretical perspectives. In the Curiosity Battery project, researchers from Lancaster University and the University of Stirling are developing a set of tasks and questionnaires that capture several aspects of primary school children’s curiosity. Two PhD projects, one hosted at Lancaster University and one at the University of Stirling, will investigate how these different dimensions of curiosity are related to children’s wellbeing and school achievement respectively.
This PhD student will develop a set of studies to test the predictive validity of the Curiosity Battery on several outcomes of interest broadly across the psychological well-being domain, such as positive affect, emotion regulation, coping with stress, resilience, life satisfaction, as well as creativity and flourishing. The student will have substantial agency and ownership over their project: they will develop the research questions, design the studies, and choose the appropriate measures under the supervision and guidance of the supervisory team.
The PhD project will begin with a systematic review of the literature examining the relationship between curiosity and wellbeing in adults and children. This will help the student identify key outcome measures and relevant related constructs. The primary study will be a prospective longitudinal study conducted over the period of one year, determining whether the facets of curiosity captured by the Curiosity Battery predict well-being. Schools will be purposively sampled to capture a range of socio-economic backgrounds, so that the role of social inequality in the experience and outcomes of curiosity can be explored.
We anticipate at least two PhD chapters to be formed from this longitudinal study, the first exploring relationships at baseline, and the second exploring longitudinal relationships over the course of the study. Further, experimental studies to probe these constructs in a rigorously controlled environment would supplement the questionnaire-based investigations using the Curiosity Battery. Overall, the PhD student will undertake both theoretical and empirical work, as well as advance the field of curiosity research methodologically.
About Lancaster University and Department of Psychology: The student will undertake their PhD programme at the Lancaster University’s Department of Psychology. They will benefit from access to the state-of-the-art research facilities, support of staff technicians, and the infrastructure of the well-established PhD programme, featuring regular research development opportunities, research seminars, writing workshops, and conferences.
The PhD student will join a multidisciplinary team of highly driven researchers from Psychology, including in the developmental, cognitive, and neuroscience areas. The Psychology Department has a very active research culture, including permanent academic staff, postdoctoral researchers, and PhD students. The department is committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusivity as demonstrated by our Athena Swan Silver Award.
The student will further benefit from strong connections established by the supervisor’s Active Learning Lab (https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/all) with local Lancaster and Morecambe area schools to facilitate research related recruitment from diverse populations. The Lancaster Infant and Child Development Lab (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/infant-and-child-development-lab/) is a purpose-built developmental research facility with a high profile in the community, evidenced by the number of returning parents of children aged from infancy through adolescence, the followers on social media, and the number of web hits.
Application details: The PhD candidate must have a first or upper second-class Undergraduate honours degree and preferably a Masters in a discipline relevant to the project. While we expect that this project would suit graduates from a psychology background, we are happy to receive applications from a wide range of backgrounds that have potential to enhance the project. A demonstrable understanding and passion for psychological research is essential. Experience working with infants and/or children is highly desirable, but not essential. The successful PhD candidate will need to complete an enhanced DBS check.
Funding details: This full-time studentship provides funding for UK home fees for 3 years (36 months) and a tax-free studentship stipend set at the minimum UKRI annual award for 2026/27 (£21,805 p.a.), subject to satisfactory progress. Due to the Leverhulme Trust’s funding requirements, only UK based and full-time doctoral candidates may apply. Unfortunately, international students will not be considered for this position. A budget for research related expenses, training and attending conferences will also be provided.
How to apply (note there are 2 elements to the process): Please apply though the official University process. Instructions for applying through the University can be found at the Lancaster University Admission Portal. Please also submit your application materials via this Qualtrics form, which is specific to this PhD opportunity.
Applications must be submitted by the 20th of April 2026. Interview date will be set in early May 2026.
A list of the materials you will need is below:
Studentship start date: October 1, 2026
For informal enquiries about the project please contact Dr Marina Bazhydai (m.bazhydai@lancaster.ac.uk).
The Department of Psychology is happy to support applications to the Lancaster University-China Scholarship Council Joint Scholarship. Please see under ‘Current Opportunities’ for information on the application process.
