The Department of Accounting and Finance at Lancaster is committed to recruiting the finest calibre PhD students of all backgrounds from all over the world. We strive to attain the highest level of academic excellence in teaching and research in pursuit of our goal of producing graduates and researchers who reflect the institution’s high-quality standards with distinction and honour. As an international research and academic training institute, we are proud to host excellent research students from a wide range of nationalities.

Our department offers intensive PhD programmes in both Accounting and Finance. These are full-time doctoral programmes of three years in total, with a fourth year reserved for final writing up of the doctoral thesis. We also offer an ‘Integrated PhD’ programme, which commences with study towards the Master of Research (MRes) award. Please note that we do not currently offer part-time PhD study.

There are a number of scholarships open to our PhD applicants, including ESRC scholarships through the North West Doctoral Training Centre (http://www.nwdtc.ac.uk/) which is the largest centre in England for social science postgraduate training, Management School and Departmental scholarships. These scholarships typically cover full fees and a maintenance allowance of at least £14,000 per year, with enhanced bursaries up to £20,000 available for outstanding applicants.

Our department typically admits up to 10 new PhD candidates each year. All our students are required to participate in the research activities of the department and to attend full-time throughout the period of study. There are many opportunities for networking with our international partners and attending workshops and conferences.  We provide an excellent research environment for our doctoral researchers, including dedicated office space, access to many specialized datasets and databases as well as scientific computing facilities and IT support.

Our admissions criteria for the Department are as follows:

• Applicants are normally expected to hold a relevant Masters degree in finance, accounting or a cognate subject area.  We will usually require a performance at distinction level at Masters degree, typically averaging 70% overall, which may also be required in a suitable dissertation element.
• In some cases, students possessing a ‘research-relevant’ first class or upper-second class Bachelors degree may be registered directly for the PhD degree, but this is rare.
• Alternatively, for students not already holding/studying towards a suitable Masters degree, the ESRC-recognised MRes programme provides a foundation for PhD study. The Department requires distinction-level performance, both overall and for the dissertation element.
• Applicants are advised that a GMAT score may be required. 
• Our English language requirements (where required) are for IELTS at 7.0 or 600 TOEFL (250 on the computer-based test).
• We are looking for evidence of creativity and potential to develop a successful career as an academic researcher. Therefore, we will usually aim to conduct an interview (which may be conducted via telephone or video-link) with suitable applicants.

Our website http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/departments/accounting/ provides more details of our programmes, our faculty and their research expertise, the application procedure as well as funding opportunities. You can also contact our PhD programme secretary Carole Holroyd c.holroyd@lancaster.ac.uk in the Department of Accounting and Finance.

To apply for this post, please click on the ‘Apply’ button below.

Application Deadline

Applications are now open. You should apply as soon as possible. You must apply by 10 January 2014 if you wish to be considered for an ESRC scholarship from the NWDTC. Otherwise, please apply before 30 June 2014 for October 2014 entry.