This scheme is open to all healthcare professionals, including nurses, midwives, allied healthcare professionals (NMAHPs), medical doctors, dentists and general practitioners, healthcare scientists, pharmacists, and clinical psychologists.

The applicant (prospective fellow) must:

• Be registered with the appropriate healthcare professional body with a licence to practice and be clinically active. Healthcare scientists without a registration must commit to registering as part of the fellowship.
• Be released from any training and/or clinical requirements for the duration of the fellowship.
• Plan to register for and complete a PhD at the QMUL or CSGUL. Fellows who are already registered for a PhD are not eligible for this scheme.

To be eligible to apply you must have a qualification that allows you to practice clinically and be registered with a regulatory body in the UK/RoI.

Supervisors will need:

• To meet the requirements to supervise PhD students set by QMUL or City St George’s.
• A contract of employment at QMUL or at City St George’s.

Yes, additional collaborators can be identified to support the work proposed and can be based at any organisation.

All details on how to apply including the application form can be found here.

The interviews will be held in person and will consist of two small panels with different focus points. More information on this will be sent to shortlisted applicants. For anyone who cannot attend, they should advise the HARP Team in advance so alternative arrangements can be made.

Yes. Applicants can propose their own research project. Students who develop their own projects are strongly advised to discuss their proposed studies with their proposed supervisors and must have agreement from their proposed supervisors upon submission of the application. Please note the project must align with the HARP ethos.

We appreciate that not all health professionals have access to a period of funded research during their training or their early career. Therefore, we encourage applicants who are in this position to consider the Pre Doctoral route.

Applicants are likely to have previously undertaken research, either through a formal internship, pre-doctoral programme (e.g. NIHR PCAF or ACF), during their training or early career or a Master’s degree with relevant modules. Practical research experience is desirable, specifically demonstrating that you have been involved in the research cycle including design, implementation, analysis, write-up and dissemination of findings.

An academic reference can be from anyone that knows you in an academic context, it does not need to be from your own degree(s) or a current lecturer or degree supervisor. If you work at a university or school, you can provide a reference from a colleague or line manager who knows your work there.

Different health professionals have different clinical training pathways/clinical experience, therefore we do not set out years of clinical experience as eligibility criteria. We encourage applicants to think about when in their career trajectory doctoral training is most appropriate and feasible.

Applicants are eligible to apply up two times for our fellowship.

Funding covers salary, travel, and training costs, full UK University PhD tuition fees, research/consumables/materials/PPIE costs.

The standard duration of a PhD fellowship funding award is three years (or part-time equivalent) from the date of registration at your host institution.

This scheme will fund tuition fees based on the ‘home’ rate and so applicants who would be required to pay overseas fees to their University, will be required to pay the difference themselves (or through alternative sponsorship). Overseas applicants are also required to be registered with a UK/Republic of Ireland regulatory body.

Yes, you can do your PhD on a part-time basis, but not at the same time as carrying out other salaried employment. We follow Wellcome policies related to flexible research careers.

You are permitted to undertake up to one day a week (to 0.2 FTE) of clinical work if appropriate to your training or helpful for your research question. For craft specialists (e.g. surgeons or midwives), this is increased to 0.4 FTE. A craft specialty is defined as a specialty or profession where manual skill and dexterity is central to the delivery of care, and individuals require dedicated time in an operating theatre environment (or equivalent) to maintain these skills. However, the emphasis of this is on your research training and this should not be compromised.

Most PhD fellows will be employed by the University where the PhD is registered and be a member of staff on the same clinical salary grade. To carry out any clinical work, you will be asked to obtain an honorary contract with your NHS or Social Care employer. The independent funding provided as part of this fellowship ensures that you remain supernumerary to the NHS or Social Care and thus not subject to the demands of service provision during their research training.