If you hold a KISS DTC ESRC studentship, you are entitled to maternity, paternity, adoption and sick leave. Maternity and adoption leave, and periods of medical leave longer than 13 weeks involve a suspension of your studentship, to recognise a loss of work time on your research, and can involve a mix of paid and unpaid leave. Please see the ESRC Postgraduate Funding Guide for guidance on what to expect. If you wish to take one of these forms of leave, you will need to complete a KCL application form and you should also contact us at liss-dtp@kcl.ac.uk as soon as possible to discuss your particular situation.
ESRC studentship holders can access additional funds to support the costs of overseas fieldwork. Information on eligibility and the application process can be found here. These funds should be viewed as a contribution to fieldwork costs; you will also be expected to use your stipend monies to support yourself. You are generally expected to have indicated their intention to undertake fieldwork in your initial studentship application proposal. However, changes to proposals to include fieldwork can be made, subject to approval by the KISS DTC Director. Please visit the link above to see the timeframes you should operate within when applying for overseas fieldwork.
As a KISS DTC studentship holder, you can apply for a number of different extensions to your studentship funding. KISS DTC has increased the range of possibilities, creating a flexible portfolio of options that responds to the aims and needs of individuals, and contributes to the development of the UK social science base. The ESRC stipulates that 12 months is the maximum period for any extension/combination of extensions, and please note that all of these extensions apply only to your funded studentship period, NOT to the College's thesis submission deadline, which for full-time doctoral candidates, remains 48 months after initial enrolment. Indeed, if it seems likely that an extension will jeopardise your capacity to meet this 48-month submission deadline, your application will not be successful.
Funding for KISS DTC extensions is always subject to our budgetary situation. KISS DTC extensions are awarded on a competitive basis and are judged based on an assessment of the value the extension can add to your research project and professional development.
Extension applications (forms available below) are accepted quarterly for evaluation. With budgetary considerations in mind, KISS will fund as many strong applications as possible from a ranked list of evaluated applications each quarter. Students across all cohort years can be awarded no more than 2 extensions so you should not apply for more than this. If you are not awarded an extension in one quarterly round, you may apply again in later rounds provided you continue to meet the criteria for the extension. Please submit your extension application a MINIMUM of 3 months (one quarter) in advance of when you would like to undertake the extension activity to ensure time for evaluation and processing.
You can see full details, application criteria and forms for each of these extensions below. You can find a diagram suggesting when to consider each of these possibilities by clicking here. A funding extension is not an immediate allocation of funds. The extra stipend payments are added to the existing end date of your studentship payments. Unfortunately these new types of funding extensions are not open to students who received their ESRC studentship prior to October 2011.
Extension for Overseas Institutional Visit (OIV)
Rationale: ESRC introduced the OIV Scheme in 2002, to support and encourage the international engagement of ESRC funded students. Now that the funding for the visits has been devolved to individual DTCs, students will be able to apply directly to KISS DTC for an extension to the studentship of up to three months plus travel costs. Overseas Institutional Visits should allow students to: undertake additional specialist research training not available in the UK; develop language skills; establish research links that will be beneficial to their current or future academic career; disseminate early research findings; attend and participate in seminars where directly related to their research.
Criteria: Students must have successfully passed the PhD upgrade and be in the second or third year of their PhD studies to apply for an extension to cover a visit. Visits taking place in the final year of the studentship must be completed at least three months before the end date of the award and prior to the extension period being implemented. Students will be required to submit a report at the end of the OIV; without the report, extension funding will not be released. See the application form below for full details of what is expected for the report. Visits must involve visiting a Higher Education institution, or an organisation with a substantive research outside of the UK, and will not be permitted if the Foreign & Commonwealth Office advises against travel to the country in question.
Procedure: Students will need to complete an application form for an OIV, including: a breakdown of visit costs and justification; their training record for the studentship period; a case for support with purpose, work-plan and outcomes for the visit; a statement of support from the lead supervisor at King’s; and a statement of support from the lead academic contact(s) at the host institution(s).
Financial support for OIVs is generally limited to a contribution towards overseas transportation and accommodation costs (up to £1500 maximum, which must be justified/evidenced in the budget section of the application form) and an extension to the studentship funding of up to three months. Students will need to use their stipends to help support additional costs.
Please complete and submit the application form below.
Application for Overseas Institutional Visit Extension
Mixed Methods Extension
Rationale: Students with projects at the interface of social science and other scientific traditions are likely to need 1+3 funding. But during the development of a +3 PhD, it is also possible for students to identify issues that need to be tackled with mixed methods, demanding substantially more of them than the 'understanding and appreciation of how to combine quantitative and qualitative techniques through mixed method approaches' developed in their foundation training (ESRC 2009 Postgraduate Training & Development Guidelines, p. 18). But the time pressure of a 3yr PhD can encourage methodological conservatism, deterring students from a mixed methods route. The MM extension is designed to counteract this.
Procedure: Supervisors apply on behalf of their student, specifying: exactly what the additional methods are, and how and why they reach beyond methodological repertoire normally expected of a 3yr PhD; exactly what training is required; and a time-schedule detailing how the method will be successfully acquired and deployed.
Please complete and submit the application form below. Students are expected to submit a short report at the end of their extension period, providing details of how their additional training was undertaken. This is required to release the additional 3 months of stipend payments. Details of what to include in the report are in the application form.
Mixed Methods Extension Application Form
Publication Extension
Rationale: The 3yr PhD provides very little time for students to start publishing their work, but this extension is intended to make up for this by providing additional stipend funding at the end of the studentship to enable the student to undertake work on two publications. To be allocated this funding, students and supervisors will need to show that there is a clear plan/date for thesis submission, which the publication extension will not impact. The publication extension time must be used for preparing publications, NOT final work on the thesis.
Criteria: To be eligible, students should be in their third year of study and have a planned thesis submission deadline that does not take them beyond the end of the currently funded part of their studentships (3 years for many studentships, or potentially 3 years/3 months, for example, if the student is already in receipt of an extension). The application should be made no more than 6 months before the student plans to submit their thesis. Fieldwork should be completed and the student should be working on their final thesis draft.
Procedure: To apply for a publication extension, students should complete the application form below with the provisional titles of their two publications, draft outlines of the contents, an explanation of the relation to the rest of the thesis, and information on the academic journals (inc. impact factor & acceptance rate). This needs to be accompanied by a brief supporting statement from the supervisor, explaining how the planned publications will contribute to knowledge (originality, rigour, significance) and confirming the student's planned submission deadline. In the case of this extension, the student should essentially have their thesis ready to submit before the extension begins (ie. the extension period should have no impact on the thesis submission timeline).
KISS DTC admin staff would expect to see the student submit their thesis just before starting or within 1 month of starting the publication extension. Monthly submission surveys will be checked, and if there is no evidence that the student has submitted within 1 month of starting to receive the extension payments, further payments will be cancelled.
Please complete and submit the application form below. Students must submit a short report at the end of this extension period, confirming details of where their publications were submitted. Further details of how to complete the report are in the application form.
Publication Extension Application Form
Extension for Quantitative Methods Teaching Preparation
Rationale: The recent £15.5 million ESRC-HEFCE-Nuffield Foundation scheme to help raise the quantitative skills of UK social science undergraduates has identified a need to enthuse and train undergraduates in the use of quantitative methods. A key part of this will be to develop and train staff to design and deliver innovative quantitative methods training across the undergraduate curriculum. Providing doctoral students who are engaging with quantitative methods the opportunity to think, develop and deliver short training 'courses' around their particular interests will help build capacity in quantitative methods training and increase the employability of doctoral students if they enter the academic job market. For example, students may prepare their work into a publicly available training dataset with associated lab-based exercises. This would be particularly important in disciplines and subjects outside of economics and psychology where there is less availability of appropriately trained staff and good teaching examples and datasets.
Criteria: Students must be specialising in the application of advanced quantitative methods during their thesis and they must have completed the data analysis and/or data collection that is to form the basis of their proposal for the QM to extend their PhD. Extension funding will normally only be released once the thesis has been submitted.
Procedure: Proposals should be submitted by the student and their supervisor which outline how the extension will be used to either develop skills or experience in quantitative methods teaching, or how they will contribute to quantitative methods provision at KCL. The proposal should outline what hard output there will be at the end of the extension (eg. a new teaching dataset made publicly available, or a new short course in the KISS DTC), and should be accompanied by a supporting statement from the Director of the focal teaching programme.
Please complete the application form below. Students will be expected to provide a short report at the end of their extension period to confirm/evidence how they have developed/implemented their quantitative teaching skills in order for the 3 additional months of funding to be granted. Further details on the report are in the application form.
Quantitative Methods Teaching Preparation Extension Application Form
Internship or Knowledge Co-generation Activities
Rationale: The ESRC already runs a national scheme of 1-6 month internships for ESRC-funded students, which must be an integrated part of the student's PhD, and KISS is developing additional opportunities. With an internship extension of up to 3 months, PhD students will be able to develop a sharper sense of the wider non-academic relevance of their research as well as professional and transferrable workplace skills in line with the Vitae Researcher Development Framework. Placements may also build expertise in knowledge co-generation, where research questions, analytical frameworks and knowledge exchange processes are co-designed with academic and practitioner input.
Criteria: Students must have successfully passed the PhD upgrade and be in the second or third year of their PhD studies to apply for an extension to cover an internship, and agree to participate in any preparation, planning, monitoring and follow-up deemed relevant through KISS or the Graduate School.
Procedure: Students should submit an application with their supervisor for an extension to cover the period required to complete an internship or placement that has been advertised through KISS or complies with the KISS guidelines (not more than 3 months.) The application should also contain confirmation from the host organisation that they have agreed to the internship. Students will be expected to submit a report at the end of their internship outlining how the experience has enhanced their understanding of wider significance of their research, their personal and professional skills and/or their understanding of knowledge co-generation.
Students can apply for additional funding of up to £750 to support travel costs incurred by overseas collaborations. A breakdown of costs should be provided on the application form. Students will also be expected to make use of their RTSG and stipend payments to cover costs. Students must provide a short report upon completion of their internship, indicating how it benefited their research and professional development. Full details of what is required for the report are in the application form.
The initial application form is available below. Please complete it and return to Angela Hartley.
KCL-Arranged Internship or Knowledge Co-Generation Placement Application Form