The Sutherland School of Law is pleased to offer up to three new doctoral scholarships in law for the academic year 2018-2019. The scholarships are open to Irish, other EU and international applicants.

Course Level: Scholarships are available for pursuing doctoral programme.
Eligible Nationalities: The scholarships are open to Irish, other EU and international applicants.
Eligibility Criteria: Applications are invited from graduates with a degree (normally of a first class or very high 2.1 standard or equivalent). The degree should either (a)  in law or (b) in aninterdisciplinaryy degree in which law was a major component.  Holding a masters degree  in law will normally enhance considerably an applicant’s chances of acceptance on one of our PhD programmes.

Method of Application: This letter should be no more than 2 sides of A4 single-spaced and can be sent either as an email attachment or in hard copy to Ms. Niamh McCabe, Graduate Programme Manager, Sutherland School of Law, UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.

  • In addition to the cover letter you must submit the following documents:
  • A research proposal which includes:
  • A statement of the research question the candidate proposes to examine;
  • An outline of the proposed methodology (in other words, an outline of how the applicant proposes to go about their research); and
  • A brief literature review. (The idea of this is to place the research within the current state of knowledge in the field in question. It should include a short, indicative, bibliography of works in the field). There is no maximum length for a research proposal. Normally, it would be at least three or four pages long.
  • Two academic references: Please note that it is your responsibility to contact your referees to ensure that references are received before the closing date/time for this scholarship.
  • Applicants whose first language is not English must submit satisfactory evidence of competence in written and spoken English, i.e. overall IELTS 6.5 (including a minimum of 6.5 in the reading and writing parts and no part below 6.0) or 90 in the TOEFL iBT (with a minimum of 22 (reading) and 24 (writing) and no part below 20.) The test results must be less than 2 years old.
  • All academic transcripts.

Please complete an on-line University Postgraduate application by the deadline. Please also send a covering letter explaining why you wish to undertake a PhD, and in particular, why you wish to undertake a PhD at UCD School of Law.

Online Application

Scholarship Link

Scholarship Application Deadline:  January 31, 2018