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Law Research Degrees

Join our vibrant research community and undertake a research degree with Newcastle Law School

Overview

Our postgraduate research (PGR) students are part of a vibrant research community, working alongside world-leading academics across law and beyond. We have a rigorous approach to research, and training and development, and a supportive environment to ensure our research students succeed for a career in academia or the professional world.

We offer PhD, MPhil and LLM by Research.

Which programme is right for me?

Our PGR Community and Facilities

Our postgraduate research students have access to the PGR hub where there is dedicated workspace, kitchen facilities and a social space. They have access to our dedicated Law Library and the workspaces available there too, as well as other facilities available across the campus.

To ensure your voice is included in decisions in the School, you will have a PGR representative who works to improve the academic experience.

We host social events for our postgraduate research students, such as pizza evenings and escape rooms. We are always open to new suggestions of activities and organise them alongside our students to make sure everyone feels included.

Our wider research community

Supervisors

Your supervisors will be your main source of support and will challenge you to develop your research project and yourself as a researcher. You can read staff profiles to see which areas we can offer supervision in. It is strongly advised to contact potential supervisors before applying.

Research groups

Newcastle Law School prides itself on having expertise across law. Our research groups represent areas of shared interest and approaches to provide a supportive and challenging network for exploring law. You can join the ones that complement your research interests and contribute to the activity of the group.

Interdisciplinary research

Newcastle Law School is part of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences where we work across 35 disciplines to form an intellectually rich and diverse community.

Training and Development

We have comprehensive training to support students’ development as a researcher. Our postgraduate students use a variety of methods and approaches to pursue their research questions. The training programmes are designed to complement each other and give our students a strong foundation for developing their research project.

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences provides training in:

  • research organisation and structure
  • thesis writing
  • research methods in a range of social science disciplines

See the full training programme: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/school-x/study/red/

Newcastle Law School

Our training programme focuses on:

  • legal research techniques and sources
  • qualitative methods for legal research and for presentation of research data
  • ethical and governance issues of legal research

In addition, each postgraduate research student receives an annual Postgraduate Research Development Fund to support their development as a researcher. This fund can be used to support training, conference attendance and fieldwork where relevant. We also have paid project and teaching experience opportunities.