About the Project
Evolution has conducted an enormous range of natural experiments on organisms facing environmental change. How can we discover the principles and solutions produced by those experiments, test them, and use them to address contemporary problems such as food security, disease control and biodiversity decline? This PhD offers the chance to develop fundamental insights into how organisms and communities evolve and interact, and use them to tackle real-world problems.
Aims
Your project could focus on learning from evolution in nature, testing evolutionary principles in action, and/or applying evolutionary knowledge to devise new solutions. How have organisms responded to disease, environmental change or human pressures in the past? Can we uncover and experimentally test the evolutionary principles behind those responses? And can evolutionary thinking help design more robust approaches to crop protection, disease control or biodiversity management that anticipate how populations will respond?
You will be encouraged to shape the PhD around your own interests and ideas. You might develop one of the directions outlined below, combine approaches in a new way, or propose a different evolutionary question, approach or study system. Interested? Contact us to discuss possible projects, the skills you would like to learn and how the work could match your interests.
Methods
Possible approaches could be to use historical collections to track evolution during periods of intense human pressure; analyse genome, RNA sequence and/or chemical data to identify the mechanisms behind naturally evolved disease resistance; conduct experimental evolution to test how diverse communities adapt to change in the laboratory and field; or use evolutionary theory to develop creative approaches to population management, such as RNA-based technologies. Current study systems in the lab include insects, fish, bdelloid rotifers, crop-pathogenic fungi and bacterial communities from tree holes in Wytham Woods.
Project code
TB01
Funding
This project is part of the DPhil in Biology programme, and is not a funded course at the University of Oxford; as such, students are expected to explore options for funding. However, we anticipate being able to offer around 6 full graduate scholarships to incoming DPhil students in 2027/28.
You will be automatically considered for several Oxford scholarships, which cover fees and stipend, if you fulfil the eligibility criteria and submit your graduate application by 6 January 2026. Scholarships are awarded based on academic achievement and potential to excel as a DPhil student.
For further details about searching for funding as a graduate student visit the graduate study information on our website.
Eligibility
For full entry requirements and eligibility information, please see the main admissions page.
How to apply
The deadline for applications for 2027/28 entry is 6 January 2027. We will continue to accept applications submitted after this date, but these late applications will not be considered for scholarship funding.
You can find the admissions portal and further information about eligibility and the DPhil in Biology Programme at the University's graduate admissions page. Please quote the Project Reference Code alongside the title in the ‘Proposed field and title of research project, if applicable’ field in the application form.
Institution website: https://www.biology.ox.ac.uk/dphil
References
Sant, D.G., Smith, T.P., Wong, E. L. Y., Cohen, J., King, K.C., Bell, T., Barraclough T.G. 2025. Eco-evolutionary robustness of wild bacterial communities to experimental perturbation, The ISME Journal; wraf144, https://doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wraf144
Peck, L.D…. Barraclough, T.G. (2024) Horizontal transfers between fungal Fusarium species contributed to successive outbreaks of coffee wilt disease. PLoS Biol 22(12): e3002480. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002480
Nowell, R.W., Rodriguez, F., Hecox-Lea, B.J., Mark Welch, D.B., Arkhipova, I.R., Barraclough, T.G. and Wilson, C.G. 2024. Bdelloid rotifers deploy horizontally acquired biosynthetic genes against a fungal pathogen. Nat Commun 15, 5787 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49919-1