Law Research

An online College application form must be completed and submitted, including a personal statement, degree transcript(s), two academic references, English language qualifications (if your first language is not English) and a research proposal.

The research proposal must include:

1. the theoretical background to the proposed research and its relationship to previous work in the relevant field(s);

2. the significance (scientific, intellectual, practical, etc) of the proposed research;

3. the transnational outlook of the proposed research;

4. the likely methodological approach and why it is appropriate to the aims of the project;

5. how their proposed research complements their previous experience and anticipates possible future research work;

6. why they feel their project fits with their proposed supervisors’ research and the strengths of the Dickson Poon School of Law.

Research proposals must NOT exceed 2 sides of A4 (Times New Roman Font size 11) in total. Longer proposals or those that contain extraneous material will not be considered.

Your application will be assessed by the research director and a member of staff. UK/EU applicants may be invited for an interview and overseas applicants will be interviewed by telephone. A final decision will be made after receipt of your full application including supporting documents and interview. Admission to our research programmes will initially be for the MPhil and after nine months of full-time study, students normally go through a formal procedure for upgrade to the PhD. Students are expected to enrol in September/October when the College offers a full induction programme but January enrolment may be permitted for this programme in exceptional circumstances.

Your personal statement is an opportunity to express your motivation and focus for wanting to do your research degree at King's. Your research proposal is separate to and should not feature in the personal statement section of the online application form. However, it should still be submitted as part of the online application, but as a separate document.

Fees are £6,300 for home/EU students (2013) and £15,400 (2013) for overseas students. Part-time students' fees are half of these. The Dickson Poon School of Law is pleased to offer up to five Law PhD scholarships all worth £90,000 each. These extraordinarily generous scholarships are offered as part of the launch of the Dickson Poon School of Law Postgraduate Research Student Scholarships for entry during 2013-14. Please see the Postgraduate Funding webpages on the King's website for further information and to apply. A limited number of Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) studentships may be available to British/EU nationals. Overseas: sources are Association for Commonwealth Universities; British Council. The Graduate School offers a wide range of funding opportunities to UK, EU and international students. You are advised to check our website continuously.