Centre for Sustainable Business PhD Studentship in Sustainable Business to start October 2024 at King’s Business School

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship at the Centre for Sustainable Business. 

Entry: PhD Enrolment October 2024 start.

Duration: 4 years Full Time

Application deadlines: 15 April 2023, 5:00pm UK time

Scholarship Description

The studentship is open to candidates who wish to pursue a PhD in the area of sustainable business. We are open to project proposals on a topic related to the interaction between digitalization and sustainability. The student will be supervised by Professor Jonatan Pinkse who is the Research Director of the Centre for Sustainable Business. 

The PhD project aims to provide an answer to the question how the practice of sustainable business is changing in the digital age. Digital technologies such as AI, cloud computing, and data analytics have the potential to help firms in achieving sustainability objectives such as transitioning to net zero or circularity. Digital technologies provide firms with more detailed data about their sustainability impacts and can form the basis of numerous new solutions. However, there is still limited insight into how firms are leveraging digital technologies and integrate these in their business practices to manage sustainability. The project will generate novel research and evidence that explains how digital technologies help firms to effectively transition to socially and environmentally sustainable practices.

Candidates should have a strong qualitative research background, with an undergraduate or graduate degree in a relevant social science subject area such as management, sociology, political science, economics, or innovation studies.

Funding

Home, EU and International studentships are available to students with outstanding research potential. Studentships cover tuition fees for three years, the pending submission status fee and a stipend of approximately £20K/annum (2023-2024 rate is £20,622), with small, annual inflationary increases.

Eligibility

All applicants for the full-time PhD programme are eligible to apply, including Home, EU and International students.

You will be required to live in the UK throughout your full-time studies, although it is understood that you may need to spend short periods overseas while conducting fieldwork.

Application process

Your application should consist of:

1) Your CV, highlighting your educational qualifications and grades, and your (previous) experiences relevant to your PhD study.
2) Your academic transcripts.
3) One academic reference letter recently dated.
4) A research proposal approximately 1,500 words in length plus references, and should be structured using the following headings:

• • Title
  • Introduction: To set up a clear research problem/question and its wider significance
  • Background: To provide a short literature review that analyses the state-of-the-art in the field and explains how the project will add to and/or challenge existing literature
  • Objectives: To state the main objectives of the project
  • Methods: To explain the methods you plan to use, including sources of, or means of collecting, data
  • Implications: To highlight the anticipated academic and applied contributions of the project
  • References

Please submit the following documents to sustainablebusiness@kcl.ac.uk and kbs-phd@kcl.ac.uk by 15 April 2023, 5:00pm UK time (please put ‘KBSCSB2024’ in the title). Please provide these e-mail addresses to the letter writers, so they can send the reference letters directly to us.

Formal appointment will be subject to checks at interview and references, certificates/qualifications/etc., and English test scores (if relevant). Enquiries should be directed to: sustainablebusiness@kcl.ac.uk and kbs-phd@kcl.ac.uk.

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