Health Psychology
University of Bristol
About the Project Digital health interventions can be effective at changing behaviours and can overcome lots of barriers to receiving face-to-face interventions such as stigma and accessibility. They also have the benefit of being scalable at a low incremental cost, which is important given low overall rates of brief intervention delivery with only 24% of smokers and 4% of risky drinkers receiving a face-to-face intervention.
- Location
- Bristol, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 21 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Health Psychology
Cardiff University
About the Project Antipsychotic medication can reduce or resolve psychotic symptoms and help prevent relapse, but adherence remains challenging, particularly for young people with first episode psychosis. Decisions to continue, modify, or stop medication are influenced by more than clinical factors, involving beliefs, experiences, side effects, and wider biopsychosocial contexts.
- Location
- Cardiff, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 21 October 2026
- Funding
- Competition Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Health Psychology
Liverpool John Moores University
About the Project Applications are invited for a three-year, full-time PhD studentship supervised by Prof Neil Walsh and his team in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University. This 3-year PhD studentship will extend upon recently published work investigating risk factors for exertional heat illness in military recruits.
- Location
- Liverpool, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- 30 October 2026
- Funding
- Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project A major challenge in modern healthcare is patient non-adherence to prescribed medication, often driven by the experience of distressing side effects. Emerging evidence demonstrates that many of these side effects are not caused by the pharmacological action of the drug itself, but rather by negative expectations, a phenomenon known as the nocebo effect.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project Many psychiatric (e.g. schizophrenia) and neurological diseases are characterised by a disturbance of the connections between different parts of the brain that need to communicate with one another. A technique called blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can determine levels of different activity in parts of the living human brain and how malfunctions can occur in disease.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Leicester
About the Project Background Across the NHS, threshold-based decision-support tools are widely used to structure clinical assessment and escalation. These tools simplify complex judgements by assigning numerical thresholds that trigger predefined actions, intended to standardise care and reduce missed deterioration.
- Location
- Leicester, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
Newcastle University
About the Project Carers can help in all aspects of a person’s life, but they can be left out of the conversations about medicines despite often heavily aiding in medicines management. We want to understand how carers are involved (or not) in conversations about medicines. This PhD will use a realist evaluation method to collect available research in this area and seek the experience of patients, carers, and professionals.
- Location
- Newcastle, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Birmingham
About the Project Mental imagery is a widely used psychological technique in sport, exercise, and health contexts to enhance performance, regulate stress, and improve wellbeing. However, the effectiveness of imagery interventions depends heavily on an individual’s imagery ability (i.e., the ease and vividness with which they can generate and control mental images).
- Location
- Birmingham, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project Developing and refining brain tissue models to enable world leading research into neurovascular coupling in health and disease. We are seeking highly skilled and motivated mathematical and/or programming postgraduate students to join our neurovascular research team that is investigating how the brain regulates its blood supply in health but also in diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Birmingham
About the Project Applications are invited for self-funded students for PhD proposals in an area relating to nutrition and mental health. Modern food environments, especially in the UK, are dominated by ultra-processed, energy-dense, low-fibre foods—contributing to poor physical and mental health.
- Location
- Birmingham, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project Air pollution is estimated to cause more than 28,000 deaths each year in the UK, with long-term exposure associated with higher rates of cardiovascular and respiratory illness, birth-defects and neuro-degenerative disorders (Laverge et al., 2015). Interventions that reduce levels of air pollution or exposure to air pollution are therefore critical. However, in the UK, we spend around 90% of our time indoors with approximately two thirds of this in our homes.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project A technique called blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can determine levels of different activity in parts of the living human brain and how malfunctions can occur in disease.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project Epilepsy is the most common neurological condition in the UK, affecting 1 – 2 % of the population. Epilepsies often involve only a small area of the brain - the epileptic focus – and the abnormal activity can propagate out from there. Although surgery is often curative in epilepsy, effective intervention relies on the correct identification of the location of the epileptic focus.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project A technique called blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can determine levels of different activity in parts of the living human brain and how malfunctions can occur in disease. Furthermore, this technique has been extended to look at communication between brain regions based on the similarity between ongoing signals (‘brain waves’) in connected parts of the brain.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
Aston University
About the Project Details of the Project Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria (CSU) is a recurrent appearance of wheals (hives), with or without swelling, that occurs unpredictably for more than six weeks. CSU is often described as an autoimmune condition with no identifiable trigger. It is therefore difficult to treat and patients can find it hard to get a diagnosis.
- Location
- Birmingham, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project Newly-qualified drivers are the most likely drivers on the road to be involved in crashes. This is likely to reflect a combination of insufficient driving skill and deliberately choosing a risky driving style (e.g., speeding, dangerous overtaking). Projects may address the causes of risky driving (e.g., attitudes, executive functions, personality), the development of driving skill (e.g., hazard perception), and interventions to improve young driver safety.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project During the past two decades, blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become the scientific technique of choice for investigating human brain function in the field of cognitive neuroscience. It exploits the local alterations in blood flow produced by changes in neural activity, termed neurovascular coupling.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project Can the repetitive practice of cognitive tasks – as in ’brain training’ programs – effectively enhance cognitive abilities such as reasoning? After more than 20 years of intensive research efforts, this question is still highly controversial, with prior studies and meta-analyses yielding inconsistent results. However, one robust and replicable finding is that trainees strongly improve in the tasks they practiced.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project The changes in cerebral blood flow, volume and oxygenation that accompany increases in neural activity form the basis of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques such as blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which allow human brain mapping. Understanding the relationship between cerebral hemodynamics and the underlying evoked neural activity is therefore vital for the interpretation of neuroimaging data.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Worcester
About the Project Discourse about dementia and best practice in addressing its malign outcomes has progressed over the last generation from a purely medicalised lens, through person centred and personhood approaches, to those where the social citizenship of individuals is promoted. This champions the human rights of individuals and an “everyday” approach to citizenship - where what people do and their ability to do the things they wish to do is key.
- Location
- Worcester, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only
Health Psychology
University of Sheffield
About the Project In order that the brain can function normally, it is essential that blood flow within the brain is well matched to neuronal metabolic demand. When neurons are active they send a message to the local vasculature to increase blood flow (a phenomenon called neurovascular coupling) and so increase the supply of nutrients: glucose and oxygen. This increase in blood flow and blood volume is the basis of non-invasive functional imaging signals such as BOLD fMRI.
- Location
- Sheffield, United Kingdom, United Kingdom
- Deadline
- Year-round applications
- Funding
- Self-Funded PhD Students Only