Studentships

IAPETUS2’s postgraduate studentships are tenable for up to 3.5 years, depending on the doctoral research project the student is studying and provides the following package of financial support:

• A tax-free maintenance grant set at the UK Research Council’s national rate, which in 2021/22 is £15,609.
• Full payment of their tuition fees at the Home rate;
• Access to extensive research support funding; &
• Support for an external placement of up to six months.

Part-time award-holders are funded for seven years and receive a maintenance grant at 50% of the full-time rate.

Eligibility is under UKRI Terms and Conditions, which means that UK and International candidates may apply.  For International Students, UKRI only pay the equivalent of home fees, so please check with the host organization (University) making the award what the circumstances are with any differential between home and international fees.

For more on the UKRI eligibility Terms and Conditions, see here

A list of frequently asked questions on NERC/UKRI studentships, including eligibility criteria, can be found here.

IAPETUS2 is looking for candidates with the following qualities and backgrounds:

• A first or 2:1 undergraduate degree, or have relevant comparable experience – we welcome applications from those with non-traditional routes to PhD study; &
• Potential to carry out excellent research, as demonstrated by individuals with a passion to follow a career pathway in environmental research or applications.

IAPETUS2 provides training for PhD students both as part of the cohort of IAPETUS2 students (and with continuity from the IAPETUS1 cohorts), and at the Host Organizations in which the project is based, and by providing access to external courses.  We use the Vitae Researcher Development Framework to plan training in order to fit into NERC’s Strategy for Providing Postgraduate Skills in the Environment Sector.

Each IAPETUS2 student will:

• Be registered for a separate qualification, a Postgraduate Certificate in Environmental Methods, which will recognize the transferable skills training and non-project-specific training undertaken.
• Have access to cohort-based activities at three points in the year: Induction in November, our SCENE Research Methods course in January, and our Annual Conference in May
• Have access to more specialized training courses (recent examples include isotope geochemistry and advanced statistics with R), with some of those courses the result of specific requests from our students
• Carry out Entrepreneurship training in the form of a “Mini-MBA”
• Take part in virtual discussion groups with the rest of the cohort at different times in the year
• Have access to funded placements, which can be student-led or designed by end-user partners