About this opportunity
We invite applications for two full-time, funded (at Home Fee and maintenance at domestic UKRI rates) PhD studentships with the AHRC-funded Centre for People’s Justice. Students will be based in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Liverpool and will commence in October 2026 or January 2027.
The Centre’s mission is to bring law and social justice research closer to people’s hopes, interests and needs for fairer, stronger and more inclusive societies. It is committed to improving law to improve lives.
The Centre is building a community of research practice and supports innovative research that helps to advance a distinct approach to social justice research in which values of empowerment, care, trust, action and change are incorporated as methodological instruments.
We advance a people-centred approach to social justice research and are seeking applications from people with evidence of a strong interest in social justice. We actively welcome candidates with diverse academic and professional backgrounds, particularly those with experience in public, private, and voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) sectors, including local government, trade unions, museums and libraries, creative organisations, and the legal advice sector.
Research Themes
Applicants must have a PhD proposal that demonstrates how their research contributes to the Centre’s objective of improving law to improve lives, through research that engages with people’s lived experience of social injustice, within one of the following areas of focus on improving law:
Crafting Law – how law is shaped
Research that explores how communities, groups and publics identify and articulate social justice issues, and how these come to be recognised as matters for law and/or regulation, including the role, or potential role, of the public in proactively shaping the law-making process and legal content.
Performing Law – how law is experienced
Research that examines how law, regulation and policy connected to social justice are experienced by people in everyday life, such as at home, at work or in education, and how these frameworks take effect in practice.
Legal Literacies and Legacies – how law is understood and remembered
Research that investigates how people and communities understand and use law. This includes how connections are made between legal rights, social justice, and collective memories of past injustice or intergenerational trauma.
We are open to proposals in any substantive area of social justice but particularly encourage proposals that focus on the intersection of legal rights and lived experience in matters such as housing, welfare rights, debt, employment, family and social care provision. Interdisciplinary and arts and humanities approaches are especially welcome.
We strongly encourage applications from under-represented groups, including people from the global majority and people living with disabilities.
Application deadline 12pm Tuesday 4th August 2026.
To be considered for this studentship, you must be able to demonstrate your suitability for doctoral research based on your qualifications and/or professional experience.
Please include with your application:
- CV
- Project proposal (up to 2,000 words)
- Two referees (these may include academic and/or professional referees, as appropriate to your background)
- A short statement setting out how your proposed project aligns with the aims and values of the Centre
- Degree certificates and transcripts (where applicable)
- Evidence of relevant professional or practice-based experience (where applicable)
- Any other relevant information you would like to share with the Selection Committee
Please do not submit an online application until you are asked to do so, apply via email to slsjpgr@liverpool.ac.uk in the first instance.
