PGR Supervision
How to find a Postgraduate Research Supervisor
Before applying for a PhD (or other type of Research Degree), you need to be sure that the University can provide a suitable supervisor to support you while you undertake your research.
If you are applying for an advertised research project, the supervisor is usually already confirmed. However in other cases, we recommend that you get in touch informally with any prospective supervisor or, more generally, the relevant school, before you submit a formal application.
Research supervisors are staff members of the University at one of our campuses. They are often in high demand and may not be able to respond to your enquiry immediately, so please be patient. Some may already be supervising the maximum number of PhD students they can and won’t be able to take on any new students.
To find a potential supervisor:
Find the school or research institute that is most relevant to your area of interest. If your proposed research is interdisciplinary, you may need to look at more than one Research Institute
- Browse through the staff profiles on the school or Research Institute webpages
- Contact your potential supervisor with your initial enquiry or research proposal
- If you can’t find this information, or if you have further questions, you should contact the Institute's Postgraduate Research co-ordinator
Multidisciplinary Research
We welcome applications from students with interdisciplinary research interests. You should contact supervisors in the areas you would like to research. You can discuss the possibility of being supervised collaboratively by people in different Schools or industry.
Heriot Watt University hosts a number of Global Research Institutes, which facilitate interdisciplinary research across the world: