UCD Sutherland School of Law Doctoral Scholarship 2025
Closing date/time: Thursday 27th March 2025, 5pm (Ireland)
The Sutherland School of Law is pleased to offer a doctoral scholarship in law for the academic year commencing in September 2025.
The aim of the scholarship is to attract applicants of the highest academic calibre to pursue a PhD in the UCD Sutherland School of Law, and to provide them with the training, experience and mentorship necessary to their research career development.
The scholarship is aimed at outstanding candidates who exceed the threshold criteria for admission to the PhD programme. In particular:
- Candidates should have a First-Class honours undergraduate degree (or equivalent), or a high 2.1 honours degree (or equivalent) supplemented by outstanding subsequent academic or professional accomplishments in law or a cognate field.
- Candidates should have either a Master’s degree in law or a cognate field, and/or extensive and relevant professional experience demonstrative of capacity for independent research and writing.
The scholarship will provide tuition fees at up to the non-EU rate and a yearly stipend of €25,000. The scholarship is tenable for a maximum of four years, renewable each year subject to satisfactory progress. The scholarship is available to full-time students commencing their doctoral studies in the Sutherland School of Law in September 2025 (or exceptionally January 2026).
Doctoral scholarship holders are usually offered some teaching opportunities as a career development opportunity.
The Sutherland School of Law has a diverse international community of doctoral students from across the globe.
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds.
How to apply:
Candidates should identify a potential supervisor or supervisors at the School based on the fit between their research expertise and your research proposal, and contact the potential supervisor to discuss their availability, capacity and expertise. They may be in a position to offer some guidance on your research proposal, but this is not essential. Supervisor support is usually a prerequisite for admission, but admissions decisions are made by the School collectively not individual supervisors.
The School particularly welcomes applicants with research proposals that align with the expertise of Faculty working in legal history and related fields, a particular strength of the Sutherland School of Law. However, applications in all fields of law are welcome, provided the proposals fit with the expertise of an identified potential supervisor or supervisors.
Once a possible supervisor has been identified, the formal admissions process is as follows:1. Please complete an on-line University Graduate application for PhD in Law FT/B142 available at https://www.ucd.ie/registry/prospectivestudents/admissions/graduateapplicants/applying/
By the deadline
- Please also send a covering letter explaining why you wish to undertake a PhD, and in particular, why you wish to undertake a PhD at UCD Sutherland School of Law, including the identity of your preferred supervisor, and if they have indicated their support.
This letter should be no more than 2 sides of A4 single-spaced and can be sent as an email attachment to Ms. Niamh McCabe, Graduate Programme Manager at (opens in a new window)niamh.mccabe@ucd.ie
You must also submit the following documents online as part of the online application:
- A research proposal. While there is no maximum length for a research proposal, at least three or four pages is expected. This must include:
- a statement of the research question the candidate proposes to examine;
- an outline of the proposed methodology (in other words, an outline of how the applicant proposes to go about their research); and
- a brief literature review. (The idea of this is to place the research within the current state of knowledge in the field in question, to demonstrate the importance and novelty of your research question. It should include a short, indicative, bibliography of works in the field).
- Two academic references: Please note that it is your responsibility to contact your referees to ensure that references are received by the school before the closing date/time for this scholarship. The school will not contact your referees.
- All academic transcripts.
- Applicants whose first language is not English must submit satisfactory evidence of competence in written and spoken English, i.e. overall IELTS score of 7.5 (including a minimum of 7 in all bands) or a score of 109 overall in the TOEFL iBT, 27/30 in reading and writing and 23/30 in speaking and listening. The test results must be less than 2 years old.
If you have queries on the scholarships, please contact Ms. McCabe at the above email address.
Late applications will not be accepted for the scholarship.
All applicants will be notified of the decision of the Scholarship Committee. The Committee’s decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into about the committee’s decisions. The School of Law reserves the right to decline to offer scholarships to candidates who meet the criteria for admission to the PhD programme but do not, in the judgement of the Scholarship Committee, meet the scholarship award criteria set out above. Applicants not awarded a scholarship may nevertheless be offered a place on the PhD programme.
Note: if an international applicant is offered a scholarship, any such offer will be conditional on the applicant demonstrating at the time of accepting the offer that s/he has sufficient funds to supplement the stipend to cover the cost of living in Dublin. Information for international students contemplating studying at UCD is available at UCD Global | International Students University in Dublin