178 PhD programmes offered by the university

Built Environment research within the School of Engineering and Innovation at The Open University UK is highly interdisciplinary, with academic backgrounds including architecture, design, engineering, planning and social science.

The Feminism and Philosophy of Sex and Gender discipline at The Open University UK welcomes applications for graduate work in the areas of feminist philosophy and the philosophy of sex and gender. 

The Postcolonial and Global Literatures research group at The Open University UK has contributed to major externally-funded projects, including: Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870–1950, and City Fictions of the New India: Literature, Infrastructure, Citizenship.

The Philosophy discipline at The Open University UK welcomes applications for graduate work in the Philosophy of Sport and Games.

The Extragalactic Astronomy research group is part of the Astronomy Discipline at The Open University UK, supported by the Faculty laboratory and computing infrastructure.

Our research in Software Engineering and Design at The Open University UK is concerned with how software is specified and developed in the real world.

The Engineering Design theme at The Open University UK addresses all stages of the engineering design process and links the properties of the products with the processes by which they are designed.

The Open University UK welcomes applications for PhD study in Ethnomusicology and ethnographic studies of music more broadly.

Exhibiting the core values of The Open University UK, the Cancer Biology research group is ‘open to people, places, methods and ideas.’

Uneven development between countries can be attributed to structural differences in how their economies are organised and depend on each other. This Economics of Development and Structural Change programme is offered at The Open University UK.

The Language, Literature and Politics (LLP) research group at The Open University UK is a cross-faculty collective bringing together researchers from the School of Arts and Humanities and the School of Languages and Applied Linguistics.

The Physics Education Research Group at The Open University UK brings together physicists with an interest in how students learn and a passion for improving their teaching. 

The Cultural and Social Psychology (CUSP) research strand at The Open University UK brings insights from cultural and social psychology to real-world issues.

The Design Group at The Open University UK has led innovation in distance and online Design Education since its inception.

In the Design Processes programme from The Open University UK, we welcome applications for research projects; please contact the department to discuss the suitability of your research interests.

We have a wide range of expertise on conflict, war and politics in the 20th century, supported by the Centre for War and Peace in the 20th Century at The Open University UK.

This Digital, Material Transformation and Infrastructures research area at The Open University UK considers cities not just as cultural and political sites, but also as sites where socio-material relations are enacted.

Research into Greek and Latin Texts in The Open University UK Classical Studies encompasses a wide range of material, both literary and epigraphic, in different genres and from various socio-political contexts.

In the Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group at the School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems Sciences, our mission is to untangle some of the key Earth system processes that drive the planet’s climate. This Oceanography and Palaeoceanography programme is offered at The Open University UK.

Economics of Personal Finance at The Open University UK covers topics such as the capacity of people to make decisions on personal finance, as well as work on the access that people have to financial institutions.