PhD studentship/funding - can I work?

melancholly

GothicStirling wrote: »

Have you considered writing for academic journals to top you up? It would boost your CV too.

if money changes hands with writing academic articles, it usually is the people trying to publish who pay (either for submission or when the paper is accepted). if you know of any journals that pay the authors for publishing, links would be grand!

Pigget

melancholly wrote: »

which bank are you with? i just went in and showed a student card and all was good with natwest (for the full 4 years my PhD took!). they just converted my graduate account back to student.

That was with HSBC. I was with them for my student account, then graduate account which then converted to a regular current account.

Should have looked at NatWest!

scottishblondie

GothicStirling wrote: »

Have you considered writing for academic journals to top you up? It would boost your CV too.

Hmm I don't know any journals that pay you!! Plus as a PhD student you have to write papers and journal articles as part of your research anyway.

TBH if you manage to get funding from the ESRC you probably don't need to worry about topping it up other than with teaching work at the uni. The basic stipend is now about £13k tax free, and teaching at the uni can get you another £200-400 a month (obviously dependant on pay and hours!). If you can get your funding on a CASE studentship (sponsored by a company or other body in conjunction with ESRC), that will give another £300 odd a month. I was getting £1800 a during the teaching months at uni, more than I'll probably earn after I graduate!!

I also had no problem with a student account, but mine has run right thru since I started uni. Halifax have very kindly given me my OD for 8 years now, even tho they say they'll only allow you to have 5 years.

wrenlegs

THanks for all of this info - again! Ive never heard of CASE? How on earth do I go about finding this sort of funding. The links so far have been invaluable. Another Q. My uni is offering bursaries (cover tuition fees or some of them). WOuld I be allowed to apply for a bursary AND ESCR funding (so have both at the same time?) or is it one or other?

Im so glad I started this thread on here... invaluable assistance :j

[Deleted User]

Pigget wrote: »

Read the small print about student bank accounts.

I'm a postgraduate student (studying a taught MA) and I was ineligible for a student bank account because I had completed my undergraduate degree more than 3 years before I started my postgraduate degree.

I'm a PhD student and get the full-benifits of student banking, also got the same as an MSc student. You should probably switch bank.

I am taxed on what I earn (other than Stipend), but the usual tax-free allowance applies, so long as your earnings are under this you will not pay tax (given you are not going to be in a position to work many hours, it's unlikely you'll go over this.)

Under my funding contract I am allowed to work so long as it doesn't interfere with my PhD and I am not holding a permenant job anywhere (I work ad-hoc for an agency to get around this). Check with your funding body as to the terms and conditions.

Places to look for funding are: research councils (ESRC, MRC, AHRC etc), findaphd.com, direct with the institution you hope to study with, and if relevant (possibly not for your discipline) but industry (although this is predominantly lab based/pharma type PhD's), and also jobs.ac.uk

Good luck

wrenlegs

Thanks Domino. Tonight Im going to have another trawl through the funding links. Im getting a bit excited. I know Im going to be groaning 2 weeks in lol!

GothicStirling

melancholly wrote: »

if money changes hands with writing academic articles, it usually is the people trying to publish who pay (either for submission or when the paper is accepted). if you know of any journals that pay the authors for publishing, links would be grand!

I've worked in publishing for 10 years now, and we have a phrase for that: vanity publishing.

scottishblondie

wrenlegs wrote: »

THanks for all of this info - again! Ive never heard of CASE? How on earth do I go about finding this sort of funding. The links so far have been invaluable. Another Q. My uni is offering bursaries (cover tuition fees or some of them). WOuld I be allowed to apply for a bursary AND ESCR funding (so have both at the same time?) or is it one or other?

Im so glad I started this thread on here... invaluable assistance :j

Funding from the ESRC will also pay your fees direct to your uni, other funding bodies may not do this so a bursary on top would be valuable. But if you have a large (relatively speaking!!) amount of funding already the university will probably choose someone who is self-funding.

Official CASE studentships are normally listed on the ESRC website, or just google "ESRC CASE studentship" a lot of websites came up, including a lot of universities. You could also try to get one yourself by directly approaching companies/organisations who might be interested in sponsoring research. However, as part of the agreement you generally have to assign them the IP (intellectual property) from the project. This isn't really an issue unless you want to, for example, sell something resulting from your research.

Another thought - if you are already working at a university it might be an idea to approach a lecturer/professor working in the area you are interested in. Most have a lot of know-how about getting funding and often hear about opportunities that you might never hear of yourself.

wrenlegs

Thanks SB! Right will check those out tonight too. Phew! So much to do! My worry is that this is all for Sept start and I havent written up my proposal yet - eek! I found on the uni webby that the deadline is end of april so Id better pull my finger out. Ill let you know how I get on :j

melancholly

GothicStirling wrote: »

I've worked in publishing for 10 years now, and we have a phrase for that: vanity publishing.

i'm not sure i get what you mean - a lot of very high impact, good journals ask you to pay (and new journals like PLoS ONE are adopting the same approach). they're journals that have peer review and that you need to have on your CV..... if you want your work to be taken seriously, this is where you publish..... i don't think science and nature charge to submit (never had anything to even think about sending there!), but they certainly don't pay you if an article is accepted. not getting paid to publish or having to pay doesn't equal a vanity publication in the academic work!