The Consortium, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will be awarding up to 67 full PhD studentships each year from 2019 to 2025. Each studentship consists of payment of tuition fees and a maintenance allowance at the UK Research Council's national rate (currently £17,688) funded for a nominal 42 months of study. The package also includes:
Northumbria is ranked in the top 25 Universities in the UK for 'Research Power' in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, and was named 'Best University in the UK' in the Times Higher Education (THE) Awards 2022. Northumbria possesses world-class expertise across most of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) subject range. For a list of subjects in which we can offer expert supervision, click on the 'Subject Contacts' tab below.
If you're visiting this page, it's probably because you have recently taken up a Northern Bridge studentship at Northumbria. Many congratulations on that! This page provides some basic information about becoming a Northern Bridge student at Northumbria. For general information about the Consortium, including useful documents, please visit the main Northern Bridge website.
As a Northern Bridge student, your experience of studying here will be similar in many ways to that of all our other PhD students. You will go through the same induction, have access to the same facilities, and your progress through the degree will be measured at the same milestones. You will be looked after by the PGR co-ordinator in your subject area, and you will be able to participate fully in Northumbria’s research culture.
There are, however, some key differences:
The standard length of a Northern Bridge PhD is 42 months (not 36)
You have the opportunity to undertake a placement of between 1 and 6 months during your programme, which might lengthen your period of study still further
You can access a range of funded training opportunities through Northern Bridge, some of them timetabled during our residential conferences
You may be working on a CDA-type project (involving a partner organization) or benefit from the input of an external advisor based at another university in our Consortium
The key thing is to take advantage of being at Northumbria AND being funded through Northern Bridge.
Key People
Your main contact will of course be your principal supervisor, but you should also be familiar with the PGR co-ordinator in your area. There will also be a Northern Bridge subject contact in your discipline (click on the relevant heading), who in most cases will be the relevant PGR director.
For any queries that relate to your registration at Northumbria, the receipt of your stipend, or claims for reimbursement of research expenses, please contact the Graduate School.
For any queries that relate to other Northern Bridge matters, please contact either your local Northern Bridge subject contact or the Northumbria NBC Academic Director Professor Matthew Potter.
Below is a list of the subjects in which we can offer expert supervision for 2023 entry, as well as the name of the Northern Bridge Consortium Subject Area Lead in that area.
If you are considering applying for a Northern Bridge studentship at Northumbria, please contact the relevant Subject Area Lead as soon as possible. The Subject Area Lead can help you find an appropriate supervisor for your project.
Northumbria University is advertising five Staff-Led Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) opportunities. Staff-Led CDAs allow you to work on a project developed in collaboration with a non-Higher Education Institution.
These studentships are open for applications:
The Women in the Ledger Stones: New Histories at Newcastle Cathedral, with The Cathedral Church of St. Nicholas, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, supervised by Dr Jennifer Aston, jennifer.aston@northumbria.ac.uk
Mapping and Interpreting 90 years of Illustrating and Writing Childhood in the Collection of Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books, supervised by Dr Mel Gibson mel.gibson@northumbria.ac.uk
Crafting Resilience: Designing informal support structures to foster solidarity and praxes of hope in the criminal justice system with Changing Lives, supervised by Dr Angelika Strohmayer,angelika.strohmayer@northumbria.ac.uk
Building digital replicas of unpaid carers to better meet community needs: Exploring the use of Personal Digital Twin (PDT) technology to provide responsive, personalised digital services to unpaid carers in Gateshead to improve community well being, with Gateshead Carers Association / Civinet, supervised by Professor Sheng-feng Qin, sheng-feng.qin@northumbria.ac.uk
Bluestocking in the North: Elizabeth Montagu, Education, and the Archive with Northumberland Archives, supervised by Dr Helen Williams, helen.williams@northumbria.ac.uk
Fuller descriptions of the projects are available here.
How to Apply
We strongly encourage you to make contact with the named supervisor to discuss the project at an early stage.
You must first complete Northumbria's online postgraduate application form. On the application form under 'Studentship / Partnership Reference' and 'Who is your sponsor / funding body?' please include the code NBC23/ plus the name of the supervisor of your project: NBC23/ASTON; NBC23/GIBSON; NBC23/STROHMAYER; NBC23/QIN; NBC23/WILLIAMS. Please note the deadline for these applications is 4pm on 10 January 2023, except for NBC23/ASTON which is 4pm on 10 February 2023.
Your application should discuss your academic and/or professional experience, and describe how this has prepared you to undertake this project. The ‘Research Proposal’ should be based on the advertised project and should set out what your proposed approach to the project will be. If your application is successful and you are invited to interview, the project supervisor may ask for additional material to be submitted (such as, for Creative Practice projects, a sample of creative work). Please contact the project supervisor if you have questions about your application.
We expect to hold interviews for these studentships in February 2023. Studentships will start in October 2023.
The standard application process allows an applicant to propose their own project. This may be either a traditional academic project or a Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA), which involves developing a project in partnership with an external organisation. Student-led CDAs are handled differently from CDAs that have been proposed by academic members of staff. The latter have an earlier application deadline and are assessed outside the main competition (see ‘Staff-Led CDA Opportunities’). Students proposing their own CDA projects will be assessed alongside all other applicants in the main competition. Further details are in the Guidance Notes.
The Northern Bridge Consortium runs a two-stage application process.
Stage One: Postgraduate Application
Applicants to both the standard PhD and student-led Collaborative Doctoral Award routes must complete Northumbria's online postgraduate application form and submit it by 4pm on Tuesday 10 January 2023. Please write the code NBC23 in the application form under 'Proposed project title/Studentship title and advert reference number. This field can be found in the 'Research Proposal' section.
NU NBC Application Workshop presentation.
Stage Two: Applicant Nomination
Outcomes from the stage one application process will be released week commencing Monday 24 January 2023. Successful candidates will then be supported by their proposed supervisor in submitting a nomination form (provided to successful applicants by the NBC Subject Area Lead at Northumbria) by the deadline of 4pm on Tuesday 24 February 2023.
Please consult the Guidance Notes when completing the form. Completed nomination forms will be submitted by your supervisor through the Northumbria University Graduate School to the Northern Bridge Consortium.
The results of the competition are expected to be announced from Tuesday 11 April 2023.
Further Notes and Guidance
You must have identified an academic member of staff who has agreed to supervise your project before you submit your Stage 1 application
Your Subject Area Lead can help you find a supervisor
We strongly encourage you to contact your Subject Area Lead as soon as possible to discuss your project
In submitting your Stage 1 application, please include the following details in your research proposal:
We advise you to send a draft of this application to your supervisor before submitting your Stage 1 application
If selected for Stage 2, your supervisor and Subject Area Lead will support you to develop the Stage 2 application
You will be asked to submit references at Stage 1. Please note that your supervisor may ask for revised references from your Referees at Stage 2.
Students already enrolled on a PhD programme at Northumbria are eligible to apply providing they will not have passed the halfway point of their programme before transferring to a Northern Bridge award in October 2023
If you wish to apply, please alert your supervisor and your Subject Area Lead as soon as possible.
You will be asked to submit to your Subject Area Lead: a 2-page CV, a supporting statement from the principal supervisor, and Project Approval paperwork OR a 750-word research proposal. You must submit this at the latest by 4pm on 10 January 2023. You will be notified if you are selected to progress to Stage 2 on 24 January 2023.
There will be two workshops taking place via MS Teams in the course of the 2022-23 application cycle for NBC Applicants and their Supervisors to receive a briefing from the Academic Director at Northumbria University and have a Q&A session. You do not need to book and can access them via the following links:
NBC Stage 1 - Application Workshop (Applicants and Supervisors)
Microsoft Teams meeting
Wed 14/12/2022 13:00-14:00
Join on your computer, mobile app or room device
Click here to join the meeting
Meeting ID: 381 761 550 773
Passcode: YRKDBz
NBC Stage 2 - Nomination Workshop (Applicants and Supervisors)
Microsoft Teams meeting
Wed 01/02/2023 14:00-15:00
Join on your computer, mobile app or room device
Click here to join the meeting
Meeting ID: 336 832 006 515
Passcode: teoaLQ
As of 2020/21, all international students are eligible to apply for Northern Bridge Consortium studentships, including EU and non-EU citizens. Please see the Northern Bridge Consortium website for further information
Candidates must be applying to commence a programme of doctoral study in the 2023/24 academic year, which starts 1 October 2023
For all general enquiries (i.e. not subject specific), including on eligibility, email Professor Matthew Potter, Northumbria Consortium Director.
Further information can be found on the Northern Bridge Consortium website.
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