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Postgraduate

Funding a PhD

A PhD is a significant investment, but it is one that brings an invaluable personal experience and a wealth of professional opportunities upon your graduation.

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PhD programmes typically take 3-4 years if you are studying full-time and 6-7 years if you are studying part-time. Some of our students self-fund their tuition and living costs and this page outlines the tuition fees for each research programme. For Home students, the tuition fee is the same across all courses and all universities in the UK. For 2022 entry this is set at £4,596 per year for full-time students. 

If you are not able to self-fund your studies, there are a range of different sources of funding available for PhD students at Queen Mary – in fact, we offer over 100 fully or partially funded studentships each year. These include:

Planning your funding is an important element of the application process and we recommend that you begin to explore your funding options as early as possible.

Tuition fees and loans

Queen Mary's tuition fees vary depending on whether you are from the UK or EU, or are coming to study in the UK from further afield. Please click the above link for full PhD tuition fee details.

The UK government introduced loans of up to £25,000 for English-resident UK nationals from 2018 onwards. Read more about the loans here

What are the PhD funding deadlines?

It is important to be aware that different funding bodies and organisations all have different deadlines: the majority of these will be between November and February prior to the commencement of your PhD project in September. The majority of Queen Mary funded studentships close for applications in January each year.

Other funding opportunities do come up throughout the year, so please be sure to keep checking departmental PhD funding pages and www.findaphd.com where all opportunities are advertised.

Where can I find out more detailed information?

Our Advice and Counselling Service have produced a detailed online funding guide for postgraduate students. This guide includes everything you need to know about money when applying for and planning your postgraduate studies.

University fee regulations

Like all other UK universities, Queen Mary is bound by legislation and Government regulations on fees.

Queen Mary's University fee regulations are outlined in this document:

University Fee Regulations 2023/24 [PDF 20,281KB]

These regulations are updated every year, you can access a list of archived and present University Fee Regulations here.

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