PhD in Psychology / Neuroscience

Flexible University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

Open Opportunities

• 13th January: Sussex Neuroscience 3+1 PhD Program

  • Fully funded for local and international students
  • You don’t need to chose a supervisor before applying. The first year is made of 3 different rotations in different labs.
  • Selection is based mostly on the candidate’s CV.

• 13th December: Sussex Psychology PhD Program

  • Fully funded for local and international students
  • Selection is based on the candidate’s CV as well as on the project proposal.
  • Get in touch with potential supervisors before applying!

What you will get

Doing a PhD at Sussex with Dominique Makowski means:

• Joining a dynamic team with a vibrant lab life
• A supervisor that actually supervises 🤯
• A super interesting research topic
• A French-style thesis defense to celebrate your accomplishments 🧀🍷

How to do a PhD in Psychology?

1. The first step is usually to contact the potential supervisor to discuss a rough research project outline. Write an email with your CV, your research interests and - if you have - some ideas for a research project that matches your supervisor’s line of research. If you don’t have ideas yet, it’s perfectly fine! I will likely propose some avenues of research that might match your interest, and refine them down the line.
2. Ideally, you would also want to come up with a plan for funding. This is the most challenging part, unfortunately. There are typically 4 types of profiles: 1) the student and the supervisor come up with a tentative research project, with which the student then applies to scholarship opportunities. 2) the supervisor already has a scholarship for a specific project that he obtained a grant for, and will recruit a PhD for that specific research project; 3) the student already secured a scholarship that allows them to pursue a PhD with the supervisor of their choice (e.g., some schemes exist from countries for their nationals to do their PhD abroad). 4) Self-funding, which we don’t recommend unless you’re one of the lucky few with money to spare.

Funding Opportunities

Funding is a complicated topic, and often the main barrier between one’s goal and its achievement. Keep in mind that there are many other possibilities and case-by-case considerations.

Here are some scholarship opportunities for funded PhDs in the UK:

• The Sussex Psychology Doctoral Research Studentship
• The Sussex Neuroscience 3+1 years PhD
• The Sussex AI PhD (you will need a primary supervisor from the School of Engineering and Informatics but I can be a cosupervisor)
• The SEDarc studentships (see also here)
• The Welcome Trust PhD Studentships
• The UKRI studentship

• The South Coast Biosciences Network (SoCoBio)
• The Chevening Scholarship (International only)
• The FIRE French scholarships (must be a collaboration with a Paris-based lab)
• The DAAD scholarships (Germans)
• The Joint China Scholarship (China)
• Scholarship Opportunities for Singaporeans:
  • gov.uk information
  • Lee Kuan Yew Scholarship
  • A*STAR Scholarship
  • SMU Postgraduate Scholarship
  • NTU’s Humanities International PhD/Postdoctoral Scholarship (HIPS)

As well as other options:

• Partnership: If an external partner agrees to cover half the cost (approx. £35k over three years), the university can match the other half of the cost. Useful for applied projects and collaborations with startups, private companies or NGOs. If you’re thinking of developing a product, a software or a service, this could be a good option.
• Collaboration: Many universities allow some form of co-supervisorship. This means that you could do the main part of your PhD in another university, and come to Sussex sporadically as part of a collaboration. Note that official frameworks can exist for this type of configurations, such as the cotutelles in France.

Check-out this how to apply guide for additional information.

Other Pots of Money

Mostly for those already registered as PhD students.

• Laura Bassi Scholarship: Masters and PhD on “neglected” research topics.

Questions and Answers

Clinical Psychology PhD or DClinPsy?

Unfortunately, the University of Sussex does not offer at the moment a PhD in Clinical Psychology that includes clinical placements and internships in hospitals. However, if you are interested in working with patients, it is entirely possible to have a research project that involves clinical populations, and specialize in “clinical” research. Some people then complement this kind of PhD with clinical trainings (e.g., psychotherapy) to transition from research to practice.

How to become a Neuropsychologist?

Neuropsychology is both an approach (focusing on the relationship between the brain and its output in the form of behaviour and thought) and a practice (involving neuropsychological assessments and rehabilitation). The latter is considered a specialization of Clinical Psychology, which means that one must be a clinical psychologist to be a clinical neuropsychologist. As said above, the University of Sussex unfortunately does not offer, at the moment, a formal PhD in clinical psychology or clinical neuropsychology. However, joining the Reality Bending Lab will get you well-prepared to eventually pursue this type of program, as the methods and mindset that we have draws heavily on neuropsychology (the use of neuropsychological tests, the focus on neurocognitive theories, etc.). In fact, some of our past members have become brilliant neuropsychologists, so feel free to ask them!

How to work on psychedelics?

Psychedelics and altered states of consciousness are a hot topic in psychology and neuroscience. Unfortunately, it is still extremely difficulty to get authorizations to work with these substances. I would not recommend to base your PhD project on this potentiality, as it’s too risky that things might not work out (due to ethical, administrative, or political reasons). That said, we do have projects running in collaborations with experts in the field, and are always on the lookout for opportunities to work on these topics. Additionally, we think it’s also very interesting to study how altered states of consciousness can be induced without external substances (e.g., through meditation, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, neural stimulation, …), which might be a more sustainable and ethical way to approach these phenomena.

Application Advice

A few tips for your writing up your application dossier, in particular pertaining your CV and cover letter. Note that these are general guidelines that also apply to other contexts (master’s programs, industry jobs, etc.).

The key thing is to keep in mind that we receive a lot of applications (few hundreds for some positions). The first mistake you want to avoid is to have a generic, impersonal application: do address specific people (and do not make mistakes in the spelling of their names, it happens often and is a turn-off), and try to concisely paint a profile of yourself that the recruiter can easily picture and form an image of: what is your background, where do you come from, what are your expertise, interests and goals. This should really be one tightly written paragraph (you can expand on this in your CV). We often see long and convoluted CVs and cover letters, that try to show “a bit of everything”, leaving the reader with little more than a sense of confusion.

Next, after providing a clear depiction of who you are, you want to show that you have done your homework about where you are applying: be specific about the people of the department (e.g., “I am particularly interested in working with Dr. X because of their work on Y”), or the papers (“I particularly enjoyed your paper on X because of Y”). This shows that you are motivated and that you are not just sending the same application to 100 different places.

Finally, you want to show that you are a good fit for the position, and show that you have experience in the methods that are used in the lab, that you have experience in the field, etc.