The Professor Sir Richard Trainor PhD Scholarship Scheme

The Professor Sir Richard Trainor PhD Scholarship Scheme has been developed at King’s College London in celebration of an anonymous donation made in honour of the legacy of Professor Sir Richard Trainor, who left the university in 2014 after ten years as Principal and President.

The university grew considerably under Professor Trainor’s leadership and rose in the league table to the position of 16th in the most recent QS world rankings. During his tenure King’s created global institutes focussed on China, Brazil, India and Russia, became 1 of 5 UK universities to be accredited as an Academic Health Sciences Centre, and increased the number of Nobel laureates affiliated with the university to 12.

King’s is delighted to celebrate Professor Trainor’s achievements and continue the university’s tradition of academic excellence by funding 31 PhD scholarships in the Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Public Policy.

Up to 12 scholarships are available for the 2015-16 academic year for specific projects, involving interdisciplinary research across a variety of thematic areas which prioritise partnership and reflect Professor Trainor’s commitment to service to society.

The 12 projects are:

• Settlement and connectivity in the English Channel: the Isle of Wight and its setting in the Iron Age and Roman periods
• Royal Shakespeares: Responses to the National Playwright in the Royal Collections, 1714-1901
• Ecologies of Artists’ Moving Image Practice in the United Kingdom, 1966–2016
• Curating, collecting and the construction of zoological knowledge: The work of Walter Rothschild, c1878-1937
• HM Treasury under Alistair Darling MP: 2007–2010
• Building the Smart City: Managing the interface between urban governance and big data
• A Ban on Ransom Payments? Political Ambitions, Commercial Stakeholder: Interests and Human Rights
• Drones for Development? Evaluating the technical, economic, political and cultural contexts affecting the potential for UAV adoption in less-developed and less-connected regions
• DATA-BRAKE
• Tracing provenance in the global food system
• Sustainable broadcast-based content-delivery architecture for high-bandwidth connectivity in rural India
• Integrating semantic technologies with electronic health records to enhance the detection of adverse drug events in mental healthcare

Details of individual projects are available here www.kcl.ac.uk/trainorscholarships

We welcome applications from home, EU and international candidates seeking to undertake a full-time PhD programme at King’s with one of the advertised projects, who can demonstrate academic excellence and research potential.

Candidates are asked to submit a current CV and cover letter identifying which project they would like to be considered for explaining why they would be suitable. Two academic references must be received by the deadline for the application to be eligible.

Certain projects will require additional documentation, e.g. writing sample, details of which can be found within the project summaries via www.kcl.ac.uk/trainorscholarships

Documents should be emailed to gsfunding@kcl.ac.uk by the deadline with the subject ‘RT Scholarship 1516.’

The scholarship offers £15,000 (tax-free) per year for up to 3 years. Plus where a partner organisation is involved in the project, additional contributions, through financial, support and/or resources will be provided.

graduateschool@kcl.ac.uk / Tel: 020 7848 3376