[ecrea] International PhD Scholarship - Cardiff University

Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies 
has one scholarship for one exceptional international student to begin 
PhD studies in January 2015.

The deadline for our current scholarship competition is Friday 7th 
November 2014. To meet this deadline you need to make sure you have 
submitted a full formal application to the University for PhD study no 
later than 7th November. Instructions on how to do this are here:

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/for/prospective/postgraduate/applying.html

If you plan to apply, you should alert the two people who you want to 
write your references. We will need their reference by this date too. 
Also, you should provide scans of your degree and other certificates, 
plus, of course, a full research proposal (see below). All of these must 
be submitted by 7th November.

A panel will assess scholarship applications in the 2nd half of 
November, and we will inform the successful applicant by the very end of 
November. The successful applicant must be ready to start their PhD 
studies in January 2015. We cannot defer the award, so if the applicant 
cannot start at this time, they will lose the award.

The amount of the scholarship is:

1. Coverage of full international fees (currently £13,500 p.a.) for 
three years;
2. An annual stipend (£10,860 p.a.) for three years.

In addition, all PhD students in JOMEC are able to apply for paid 
teaching work on our BA and MA degrees, as well as other paid work that 
becomes available.

To be eligible for the award, the University must agree that you fulfil 
the entrance requirements for the PhD programme. Therefore, your 
application will be assessed within JOMEC and passed on to the 
University Registry. If the University does not agree to offer you a 
place, you cannot be considered further for the scholarship. However, if 
you are offered a place on the PhD programme but are subsequently 
unsuccessful in the scholarship competition, you can still take up your 
place if you find alternative means to pay the fees and support yourself.

If you hope to be successful in your application, you should make sure 
that your proposal is something we are likely to be able to supervise 
here. Ideally, you should suggest a supervisor.

The next step for you would be to write a thesis proposal for us to 
consider. The proposal should include the following elements:

- A provisional thesis title

- A short abstract of your project which offers a concise summary of 
what you want to do, how, and why the work is important (around 300-500 
words)

- An indication of the academic literature which will inform your 
research (including reference to relevant studies which have already 
been carried out relating to your field, and the academic theories which 
will influence you in your work) (around 300-500 words)

- A statement of the objectives of your research along with a statement 
of your principal research questions (you should include the main 
questions that your thesis will set out to answer and give reasons why 
you think they are important questions) (around 300 words).

- A summary of the research methods you will use. This section should 
explain how your methods will allow you to answer each of your research 
questions, and give details of exactly what your objects of analysis 
will be and why they have been chosen (if you want to look at media 
content which media will you analyse and why? How big will your sample 
be? If you want to carry out audience research which parts of the 
audience will you work with, in what way, and why? If you want to do 
media production work who will you interview and/or where will you carry 
out your ethnographic observations, for example?) (around 500-700 words)

- A full and accurate list of references to any works you have cited in 
your proposal

Along with the proposal you should include a covering letter which 
explains why you want to carry out your work at Cardiff and with whom as 
a possible supervisor (with reference to how your work fits in with the 
research done by your preferred supervisor, and the research that's 
carried out at the school more generally). You can find info about what 
we do here:

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/index.html

And you'll find info about the relevant research carried out in the 
school here (before writing this part of the letter I suggest you read 
about all of our research):

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/research/index.html

You should indicate where you plan to live when writing your PhD, and 
how willing you would be to participate in PhD community life. We need 
to know this because we consider it to be quite important that PhD 
students live in or near Cardiff so they can participate fully in the 
postgraduate community here (we see building and maintaining an academic 
PhD community as very important, and we have a range of different formal 
and informal learning opportunities including taught seminar series', 
PhD peer-review and support clubs, a PhD film club, etc). Where you live 
is also important if, later on in your time at Cardiff, you wish to 
contribute to undergraduate seminar teaching (many of our PhD students 
wish to gain valuable experience as teaching instructors supporting our 
academic staff in teaching on a range of undergraduate modules).

Your covering letter should also include information about how you plan 
to pay your tuition fees, if you don’t get a JOMEC Award. Information 
about how much it costs to do a research degree at Cardiff is here:

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/fince/students/postgraduate/

If you click this link you'll also find some information about other 
possible studentships (and we suggest you look into other avenues of 
funding that might be available to you as well):

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/degreeprogrammes/pgresearch/pgstudentships/index.html 


If you can think of any other supporting documents that might strengthen 
your application then please do send them through as well. In addition 
to all of this, if your first language is not English we ask that you 
have a minimum IELTS score of 7.5.

Enquiries and queries should be directed to Paul Bowman 
((BowmanP /at/ cardiff.ac.uk))



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