Qualification Type: | PhD |
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Location: | London |
Funding for: | UK Students |
Funding amount: | Studentships to cover tuition fees (£4,786) and provide a grant for living expenses (c. £18,000 p.a. full-time) |
Hours: | Full Time |
Placed On: | 5th June 2025 |
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Closes: | 27th June 2025 |
The project
INFILTRATES: Influence of Financial Elites – Trajectories, Socialisation, Values and the Repercussions of Wealth – explores how financial elites in the UK, France and Germany influence wealth inequality, and how their career paths, values, and social networks maintain the status quo. As a PhD student on this programme, you’ll play a key role in generating new insights that could help challenge global inequality – while developing your own expertise through immersive, high-impact research.
Two doctoral scholarships are available as part of a project funded by the prestigious VW Foundation, to investigate the influence of financial elites on wealth inequalities, considering their trajectories, socialisation and values, in Germany, France and the UK. The studentships are for 2x fully funded 36-month scholarships.
The project aims to investigate how the growth and legitimacy of ‘asset manager capitalism’ and consulting industries contributes to wealth inequalities, with negative repercussions on the climate, social spending and public regulation. Understanding how the current status quo is maintained is vital to help generate new insights into how inequalities can be challenged.
This is a major project, using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and executed by an international team of sociologists and political scientists.
The doctoral students based at Queen Mary University of London will work across three of the project’s six work packages. Using predominantly qualitative methods, this research will explore how apparently meritocratic recruitment, selection and promotion processes reproduce existing elites, shape value systems and contribute to their social legitimacy. It will examine the values financial elites hold on key issues such as taxation, wealth redistribution, or the environment, and how these values are reinforced through patterns of recruitment and promotion.
Project A will explore entry into elite finances and professions, possibly in a comparison between entry into the London financial and consulting industry and the Paris or Frankfurt financial hubs. Using surveys and interviews as key methods, the study will identify aspirant financiers and consultants as they navigate graduate recruitment and selection processes, following them over the course of c.18 months, to consider their experiences and explore what values, knowledge strategies and networks are conductive to successful applications or orientations towards the job market. This project will focus on different forms of socialisation, the adjustment of aspirations, the mobilisation of various resources and be focused on the supply-side.
Project B will explore the attitudes of more experienced professionals on the demand-side including those responsible for hiring and promotion decisions. Using in-depth interviews as key methods, this project will consider what soft skills and personality traits are valued, how and why, and how does this map on to the demographic and cognitive diversity of new entrants and of those getting promoted? It will consider how financial elites (investment bankers, strategy consultants) understand questions of inequality and merit, and the role of government, as they relate to their work. An international comparative perspective would be welcome but not obligatory.
While these scholarships are based in London at Queen Mary, the project offers excellent opportunities to engage with a team of four other doctoral students, two post-doctoral researchers, and senior researchers working on this project in Germany and France. Both scholarships will be co-supervised by Dr Louise Ashley and Professor Elena Doldor, based in the Centre for Research in Equality and Diversity (CRED) within the School of Business and Management, and the UK leads for the INFILTRATES project.
Scholarship benefits
Who is eligible
How to apply
Applicants are asked to follow our usual online application process, by clicking the 'Apply' button, above.
On the online application form, you should indicate that you would like your application to be considered for the VW Foundation INFILTRATES project.
Please indicate which project as outlined above you are applying for (A or B) in the personal statement. You will be asked to upload a full CV, a personal statement/proposal (one document) of up to 1500 words, and a writing sample. The personal statement/proposal should cover:
The writing sample could ideally be a chapter of a Masters dissertation, or an academic paper (accepted or for submission). If not available, candidates should upload an alternative form of academic writing, which could for example include an academic essay.
Before applying, please visit the School of Business and Management PhD webpages, which will help you to complete your application. The guidance is relevant to all applicants, regardless of subject area and type of Studentship.
The deadline for applications to Queen Mary is June 27th 2025.
How your application will be assessed
Your application will be considered and ranked by Dr Louise Ashley, Professor Elena Doldor and members of the INFILTRATES international team. The team will evaluate applications on the basis of the following criteria and weightings:
Applicants will be ranked and the top three will be invited to interview, to take place in July 2025 (online). If two or more candidates are equally ranked following the interview, preference will be given to the candidate scoring more highly on the following criteria: quality of proposal: if still equal, preparedness of applicant; if still equal, quality of writing sample.
We anticipate offers will be made to successful candidates in July 2025 to be accepted or declined within one week.
If you are a non-English native speaker, you must meet the IELTS requirements for your course and send the evidence to Admissions. You are therefore strongly advised to sit an approved English Language test as soon as possible. Your IELTS test must still be valid when you enrol for the programme. They are valid for 2 years.
For any questions about these scholarships please contact:
Dr Louise Ashley l.ashley@qmul.ac.uk
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