The Centre on Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) at Queen Mary University of London invites applications for doctoral programmes in the Queen Mary Business School and School of Geography starting in September 2027. In exceptional cases, a January 2028 start may also be possible.
The Centre offers a collegial environment for PhD research and supports its existing cohort of PhD students towards academic and other professional development needs.
Areas of specialization:
PhD supervisors at CLaSP have interdisciplinary research expertise in a wide range of areas including Business, Development Studies, International Political Economy, Critical Management Studies, Economic Geography, Political Ecology, History, and regional expertise in the Global South (particularly Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East), Europe and the UK.
We particularly welcome students wishing to pursue research on the following (or related) themes:
Labour regimes, nature, and global production/global value chains
Divisions of labour, value capture, globalisation, and management
Political economy of ‘sustainable development’, extractivism, and energy transitions in the Global South and North
The sea, maritime industries, geopolitical economy/ecology
Urban infrastructures, water politics
Business politics and multinational corporations
Global ecologies of work in ‘green frontier’ decarbonising industries
Hidden forms of work, unpaid labour, and environmental stewardship
Ethnographic approaches to informal(ized) work
Platform economy and digital work/labour
Social reproduction, gender and work
Subaltern studies of race, ethnicity and labour
Histories of international political economy/political ecology
The military, security, and development
Workplace conflict, class composition, political organisation, and capitalist restructuring in post-war Europe
Financialization, particularly of labour, health, housing, development, and/or the green transition
Philanthropy, philanthrocapitalism, and sustainable finance
Migration, remittances, and development
Digital and micro-finance, debt, and social reproduction
Rent and rentierisation in theory and practice
Neoliberalism and post-neoliberal policy agendas
Social movements, activism, and intersectionality
Computational methods in research on business and society
Expressions of Interest:
It is recommended that you contact a potential CLaSP supervisor directly with a CV and a brief research proposal before making a formal application. You should contact supervisors as soon as possible in the academic year to allow them time to share feedback on your application before submission, especially if you are also applying for funding.
This page includes profiles of our current academics and PhD researchers for reference.
Funding:
PhD scholarships for UK and international students are available through the ESRC’s LISS DTP, as well as several QMUL studentships. QMUL funding deadlines begin in November depending on the scheme: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/funding_phd/ Please note that funding is highly competitive.
Other details and application links for a PhD at the Queen Mary Business School can be found here: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/subjects/business-and-management.html.