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  4. PhD GTAs

PhD Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTA)

The Department of Law offers a limited number of Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs) to PhD students at Queen Mary each year. The award covers tuition fees and a maintenance grant set at Research council rates. In 2024 this amounted to around £21,200 per year.

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How are Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTA) awarded?

GTAs are awarded annually on the basis of the academic excellence of the candidates. GTAs are allocated on the basis of the teaching needs in the Department of Law and the areas of expertise of the PhD students receiving the award.

Am I eligible?

To apply for a Graduate Teaching Assistantship you should:

  • Meet the PhD programme entry requirements.
    All applicants, including GTA applicants, must meet the Law PhD programme entry requirements, these include high academic performance in taught postgraduate degrees in a law or law-related subject. Read the ‘entry requirements’ tab on the PhD programme page.
  • Hold an undergraduate degree in Law (BA in Law or LLB), which can be from any country. However, we prefer applicants to have a UK or common law LLB qualification, as you will be expected to be more familiar with the teaching syllabus of the course that you will assist teaching on.
  • Have organised supervision with an eligible academic at the School of Law. Applicants are encouraged to contact an eligible academic staff member to secure supervision prior to submitting their application, and so prior to the funding deadline date.  Whilst applications submitted without supervision agreed will also be considered, it will aid any application for funding if they can show they have already secured supervision by the time the funding selection process takes place.   Information and guidance for applicants on how to contact academic staff can be found on the main PhD webpage, specifically in the ‘Finding a Supervisor’ section. 
  • Be able to start your PhD in September 2025 as that is when teaching begins and the award will start to be paid.  Applicants should note that our PhD programme only has one entry point each year – in September. Given that most LLM courses in the UK end with graduation in November (and that entry on to our PhD programme is dependent upon your obtaining a certain grade on your LLM so as to meet our academic entry requirements), so this means for applicants currently taking their LLM in the UK (but not at QMUL) where the date of graduation falls after September 2025, and/or for non-EU applicants requiring a UK student visa who are currently taking an LLM in the UK, including at QMUL, then an application this year is not possible unless they have previously already taken an LLM degree.
  • Should be from the UK, as one or more GTA places will be reserved for Home students only. However, applications from International students will also be considered, on a case-by-case basis.

Department of Law Research Areas

As the GTA is a Department of Law award, your research proposals must relate to the Department of Law's areas of teaching and research The Department of Law can offer supervision in most areas of non-commercial law. Please see our staff list to view areas of staff expertise. Click on the DoL/CCLS button on the top of the table to list only the Department of Law staff.

The Department of Law also co-ordinates and conducts research in the legal field via a number of Research Centres:

Within the area of Justice and Human Rights:

Within the area of Society, Democracy and the Humanities

Within the area of International, European and Comparative Law

Within the area of the Governance of Business and Finance

The Department would also welcome applications where the proposed research relates to the work and focus of one of these Research Centres.

What do Graduate Teaching Assistants have to do?

Students on GTAs teach up to four hours per week on the undergraduate LLB degree course (with all the appropriate administration that accompanies this - such as providing office hours and marking student essays). GTAs are also involved with examining duties in the Department.

Deadline

The deadline for applying for the GTA award for 2025-26 is Wednesday 2 December 2024. You must have completed the main PhD application process, including the submission of all required supporting documentation, by this date. Also, applicants should aim to have contacted an academic staff member and gained their agreement to supervise prior to submitting your application.

Only applicants who have completed the online application process to the PhD programme prior to the funding submission deadline will be considered for funding. The selection process will then take place during the next couple of months and be completed in February 2025. 

How to apply

For information on how to make an application, what our entry requirements are, and what supporting documentation is required, please see our PhD webpage.

To make an on-line application, you would need to visit this webpage and then access the portal to the online application system, by clicking on one of the two options given on the webpage (for either ‘full-time’ or ‘part-time’ study, depending upon which study mode you wish to apply for).

The online application system requires applicants to confirm the name of their proposed supervisor (in the ‘Research Proposal’ section). You should put the name of the academic who has agreed to supervise your project here.

Notifying the School of Law that you wish to apply for GTA funding

When you complete your online PhD application you must tell us that you wish to apply for GTA funding by answering the questions in the ‘Other Information’ section. In response to the question: ‘Are you applying for a specific named funding’ by selecting yes from the drop down menu, and then to the new question that appears ‘Which specific named funding?’ choose the ‘I am a School of Law – GTA applicant’ option from the drop-down list provided. Without this notification, you will not be considered as a funding applicant. You will be treated as an applicant to our PhD programme only.

If you want to apply for GTA funding and have already submitted your main application (without indicating that you wish to be considered for one of our funding awards) you must contact Mr Gareth Skehan, PhD Admissions Administrator, before the deadline by email on g.skehan@qmul.ac.uk, and state the award that you want to apply for. Without this specific email notification you will not be considered for GTA funding. If you wish to also apply for either the Studentship award or one of the Doctoral Training Programme funding awards simultaneously, you may do so via the on-line application system.  However, if you wish to be considered for more than one of the funding options, such as the GTA award, on the ‘specific named funding’ drop down list, then you will need to e-mail g.skehan@qmul.ac.uk with notification of this before the relevant funding deadline. 

Contact us

If you have any queries relating to the funding application process, please e-mail the School of Law PhD Admissions Administrator, Mr G Skehan by email on g.skehan@qmul.ac.uk.

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