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Your proposal will help us to make sure that:

• the topic is viable and feasible within the study period
• the school can provide appropriate supervision and other necessary support
• you have thought through your interest in and commitment to a piece of research
• you are a suitable candidate for admission

The process of producing a proposal is usually also essential if you need to apply for funding to pay your fees or support yourself whilst doing your research. Funding bodies will often need to be reassured that you are committed to a viable project at a suitable university.

The research proposal: an outline

The research proposal constitutes the main way in which we evaluate the potential quality of your PhD plans. Your proposal should be approximately 1,500 to 2,000 words in length and include:

• a provisional title
• a research question or questions or hypothesis
• an outline of the key aims of the research
• an outline of the value or importance of the PhD
• a summary of the existing literature
• research methods/methods of work
• timetable

The title

The title indicates the ‘headline’ character of the PhD. It should include any key concepts, empirical focus, or lines of inquiry that you aim to pursue. For example: ‘Are NGOs practising sustainable development? An investigation into NGO practice in rural Botswana’, or ‘Understanding the Preferential Turn in EU External Trade Strategy: A Constructivist International Political Economy Approach’.

You can negotiate changes in the title with your supervisor, should you be successful, but it is important to devise a title that describes what you aspire to research – and which is original and exciting.

Question or hypothesis

You need a research question (or questions) or hypothesis to drive the research forward. The question/hypothesis will provide your motivation; to answer the question or prove/disprove the hypothesis.

The question/hypothesis will need to be something that has not been posed before. This might involve looking at something that no one has looked at before, or it might mean taking a fresh approach to an existing topic or issue.

Aims

The aims of your research should be a short list of answers to the question - what will the PhD do? So, for example ‘this PhD will explore...’ or ‘by carrying out this research, I will contribute to debates about...’. The aims are broader than the questions/hypotheses; they give a prospective statement about the overall destination of the PhD and its potential impact.

Value of the PhD

The value of the PhD follows closely from the aims. Think about how the ways it might improve our political thinking - a new perspective or the generation of new evidence? To whom might the PhD be interesting - scholars looking at a particular issue, communities within specific institutions or certain groups of people?

Existing literature

A short note of key existing literature situates the PhD in existing research.

Literature reviews are not simply descriptive mapping exercises at PhD level. Here you should identify the key texts and say something about how these texts are important for your research - whether it is to support, extend, or challenge existing work.

You should make clear the research gap your project intends to fill.

Resources

The resources you require can vary according to the nature of the research: access to a particular archive, specialist library, visits to field sites, the use of analytical software, access to databases, training, workshop attendance and so on. It is important to list any of these resources and give a very brief account of how they will enhance the PhD.

Research methods/methods of work

The methods of work is a particularly important section. This is where you can say something about how you will answer your question or prove your hypothesis. It is relatively easy to ask a new question; it is more challenging to set out how you might come up with a convincing answer!

Methods do not only mean empirical methodologies such as semi-structured interviews or surveys and statistical interpretation; it also might involve a statement on the kind of theoretical framework you will employ, a certain kind of approach to history or a way to understand political ideas.

Methods are therefore qualitative, quantitative, theoretical, empirical, positivistic, heuristic... whatever fits with your research.

Timetable

The research also needs a timetable. This should be set out over three years (or three and a half for some scholarship routes) with clear indications of how long you will need to prepare for and carry out research (however defined) and allow time for writing up. Try to be as detailed as you can at this stage.

Each of these criteria helps us make a good judgement about your proposal. By following these criteria you will have the best chance of getting your proposal accepted.

Example PhD proposals

Find successful sample PhD proposals, below.

• The implications of Brexit for dimensions of belonging among British-born white residents in England (PDF, 462KB)
• Exploring Barriers faced by South Asian Muslim Lone Mothers and the Role of Intra-ethnic Organisations in overcoming them (PDF, 620KB)
• Friendly but pervasive: Non-assertive control mechanisms and the maintenance of social order in Tokyo (PDF, 197KB)
• Communication Strategies of Governments in Public Health Emergencies: A case study of governmental roles against COVID-19 in mainstream media reporting in China and United Kingdom (PDF, 299KB)
• The Commercialization of Fragmented Space: The Production of Rural Space on China’s Short-Video Platforms (PDF, 466KB)