Midlands4Cities is open to both home and international applicants.

M4C is a collaboration between eight leading universities across the Midlands - the University of Birmingham, Birmingham City University, University of Warwick, Coventry University, University of Leicester, De Montfort University, Nottingham Trent University and The University of Nottingham.Find out more about the M4C Partnership.

Types of M4C awards

There are two types of PhD awards through Midlands4Cities:

• Open Doctoral Award (ODA)
• Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA)

Open Doctoral Award (ODA)

You'll agree a research project with your supervisors. You will have a minimum of two supervisors who will offer expert guidance, support and feedback throughout your research. University of Nottingham academics are leading specialists in their fields with years of experience in successfully supervising PhD candidates.

Although you will be a University of Nottingham researcher you can also have co-supervisors from any of the other Midlands4Cities universities where their experience and expertise is an appropriate fit for your research topic.

You're encouraged to get in touch with potential supervisors as early as possible. They can use their experience to advise on suitability for M4C applications, co-supervisors and writing applications.

Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA)

We offer a number of diverse and unique project opportunities in partnership with national, regional, and local partners. Your supervision team is already set. As well as producing your thesis you also gain first-hand experience of working with an organisation outside the university environment.

Application writing workshops

Each year M4C run a series of application writing workshops to help you with your application. The Nottingham workshop is on Saturday 9 November, 10am to 12pm and will be held on MS Teams. Register for the workshop.

Midlands4Cities funding is the only reason I'm here to be completely honest. I couldn't afford to do a PhD otherwise.

It puts everyone on a level playing field. So it's not like university where you may really feel the financial difference of different people's situations, which can feel very unfair. Now it feels like it's much more even and there's less disparity.