PGR placements

Guidance on optional and compulsory placements for PGR students.

Placements

The University believes that doctoral researchers should have the opportunity to undertake a placement where it will benefit their development or career opportunities.

There are three types of placement available to PGR students: standard placements, entrepreneurial placements, and compulsory placements. Standard and entrepreneurial placements are both considered optional placements. Each has different eligibility criteria, and students should read the relevant guidance below carefully before applying.

A period of research that is part of the student's programme at an off-campus location would not constitute a placement. This could include fieldwork, data collection in archives, research attachments at other institutions to learn specific research techniques or to access specific facilities or equipment.

Optional placements

Standard placements

Standard placements are periods of learning activity away from the usual education environment, undertaken during a programme of study. Partners providing placement opportunities are likely to include business and industry, NHS, charities, public sector bodies such as local authorities or central government. Where placements are with an educational institution, this should provide opportunities for skills development that are different from those obtained in the PhD.

Placements must be agreed upon with the supervisory team and should not adversely affect a student's submission deadline. Students who wish to undertake a standard placement during their studies which is unrelated to their research topic can apply to reclaim the time spent on placement using the placements application form on this page. Students who are granted permission to undertake a placement are given a registration status which reflects the fact that they are on placement and will have their time limit extended accordingly.

Standard placements must not exceed 12 months' duration and will normally be shorter, up to 12 weeks' duration. Students will not normally be supervised or monitored by the University during a standard placement.

The placements form must be completed before the start of the placement and should be checked and approved by the student's supervisor and returned to the PGR Support Team in Research, Partnerships and Innovation, who will check the student's eligibility and put the application forward for faculty approval. Once approved, the student's record will be updated to reflect the student's status on placement and to update the student's fee-paying period and time limit.

An agreement should be put in place with placement hosts. This can be done by the Contracts team in Research, Partnerships and Innovation, with academic supervisors contributing necessary information to include in the agreement.

Students with University funding or funding disbursed by the University should be aware that their normal stipend will not cover the longer period of registration and will be suspended for the duration of the placement. Applicants must obtain permission from their financial sponsor to undertake the placement if it is outside the expected terms of the scholarship.

An agreement should be put in place with placement hosts. This will be done by the Contracts team in Research, Partnerships and Innovation, with academic supervisors contributing necessary information to include in the agreement.

Applications must be made before the student's placement commences, otherwise the student's record will not be updated to reflect the new time limit. This is essential both to maintain accurate details of the student's registration and to ensure compliance with the University's statutory reporting duties.

Entrepreneurial placements

The University actively encourages PGR students to take part in the development of commercial opportunities arising from their research, including through programmes such as Innovate UK ICURe. Where a student's entrepreneurial activity reaches the stage of company formation and incorporation – typically requiring the student to step back from their degree to take a full-time role in a spin-out – an entrepreneurial placement provides a dedicated mechanism for doing so.

The entrepreneurial placement sits within the existing PGR Placement framework and uses the same registration status (PGRP) as a standard placement.

Unlike standard placements, entrepreneurial placements may involve activity that is directly related to the student's research. The student is not required to demonstrate that the placement is unrelated to their research topic; however, the student will not be actively working on their thesis during the placement period.

Eligibility

To be eligible for an entrepreneurial placement, a student must:

hold an executive or senior managerial role (e.g. CEO, CTO) within the spin-out company within which the placement will take place. Students holding a researcher or technical contributor role, for example, are ineligible;
have completed ICURe Discover, ICURe Explore, ICURe Exploit, or an equivalent programme providing external validation of the commercial opportunity. "Equivalent" in this context means a competitively entered, externally assessed programme with a track record of validating commercial opportunities; informal business development activity would not normally meet this threshold;
not normally be within the final 6 months of their programme of study at the point of application (measured from the expected end of the fee-paying period). Any exceptions to this requirement will be subject to approval by the Faculty Director of Postgraduate Research where the commercial opportunity has been independently validated through a programme such as ICURe;
be either a Home student, or an International student not subject to Student visa restrictions. This provision cannot be extended to students on Student visas;
have the full support of both their Primary Supervisor and School PGR Lead.

Where a student is funded externally (Research Council, charity, or industrial partner), the relevant funder must be notified and their agreement obtained before the placement commences.

Duration and review

An initial entrepreneurial placement of up to 12 months will be approved by the Faculty Director of Postgraduate Research, on the recommendation of the School PGR Lead and supervisor. A review at the 12-month point will consider progress and whether continuation is appropriate. A maximum extension of a further 6 months may be approved following review, giving a total maximum of 18 months. Any further time away from the programme, where required, would revert to the standard Leave of Absence mechanism – but as the entrepreneurial placement does not count toward the 24-month LOA cap, a student reverting to LOA at this point would retain their full LOA entitlement.

Supervision and student experience during an Entrepreneurial placement

Students on an entrepreneurial placement will retain access to University email, library, and institutional systems throughout. Unlike a standard placement – under which supervision and monitoring by the University would not normally continue – students on an entrepreneurial placement are expected to maintain regular contact with their supervisory team. The frequency and nature of this contact should be agreed at the point of approval and reviewed at the 12-month stage. Mandatory training obligations remain in place.

Students will not normally receive their doctoral stipend during an entrepreneurial placement. At the stage of company formation and incorporation that this mechanism is designed to support, students would typically be remunerated directly by the spin-out. Stipend arrangements should be confirmed with the relevant funder as part of the notification process, and students must be made aware of their position before the placement commences.

What happens if the venture does not proceed?

If the spin-out does not progress as expected, the student may return to their programme of study at any point during the placement period. Their time limit will be adjusted to reflect the period actually spent on placement, and they will resume with their full LOA entitlement intact.

Onward pathway: change of candidature

Students returning from an entrepreneurial placement may wish to consider whether a change of candidature – for example to an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) or equivalent – would allow their commercialisation experience to be captured within the thesis. This is not a requirement, and the standard PhD remains the default pathway. Students considering a change of candidature should discuss this with their supervisor and School PGR Lead in the first instance.

How to apply

Students should complete the placements application form, selecting "entrepreneurial placement", and discuss the application with their supervisor and School PGR Lead before submission. The form should be returned to the PGR Support Team in Research, Partnerships and Innovation before the placement commences. Applications received after the placement has started will not normally be approved.

International Students and optional placements

Due to immigration regulations, optional placements cannot generally be accessed by students on a Student visa. This is because of restrictions on the amount of leave of absence permitted, and on the right to work full-time in the UK (see guidance from the International Student Support, Advice and Compliance team here).

An alternative option could be to undertake work experience informally within visa permitted working hours, alongside the PGR programme. This would not require an application form or any changes to the student record, but would need to be balanced carefully alongside other commitments because the student's time limit would not be extended in these circumstances. Any part-time work a student on a Student visa does on placement inside the UK alongside the PGR programme will count towards their 20 hour per week limit under their visa conditions. Students must be careful to ensure they limit any additional employment they do during this time to ensure they are not working a total of more than 20 hours per week in the UK.

Alternatively it may be possible to undertake a placement outside of the UK (subject to working restrictions in that country), in which case it would be permitted to apply for time away from the programme via this process. It is important that international students understand that the placement may contribute to the total amount of Leave of Absence permitted by a Student visa before UKVI reporting is required, and may result in the cancellation of their current visa and a new visa application to return to the UK in future. International students must familiarise themselves with the guidance here in advance of submitting an application.

Compulsory placements

Some PGR programmes include mandatory placements which students must take as an integral and assessed part of their course. Where this is the case the placement will be a mandatory and assessed component, usually linked to a module, which must be completed in order to progress to the next stage of study, or to be eligible for award. The placement requirement must be approved when the programme is set up, and specified in the programme regulations.

In these cases, students do not need to submit an application form and no changes will be made to the student record or time limit to reflect the placement. This is because it forms part of the programme the student was admitted to, and time for this is factored into the normal registration period.

International students are permitted to work full-time as part of a compulsory placement of this nature, because it is an integral and assessed part of the programme specified on the visa. The only additional requirement for international students is that details of the placement (dates and location) are reported to Research, Partnerships and Innovation in advance of the placement starting, so the temporary change of location can be reported to UKVI. Normally the administrative team managing the programme’s placements will be responsible for this.

Please note this applies to compulsory placements as reflected in the University’s programme regulations only. If a funder, industry partner or other party requires a placement to be completed, but students are not enrolled on a specific programme with an approved and integral placement, this will need to be managed via the 'optional placemen' routes above. Any programmes interested in introducing an assessed and integral placement should consult the PGR Programmes team.

Placement application form