PhD Studentship: Law and the Nonhuman

NUAcT PhD Studentship: Law and the Nonhuman

Award Summary

Full tuition fees at the Home rate plus an annual stipend equivalent to the National Minimum Doctoral Stipend (£20,780 from October 2025) across 3 years. We cannot, unfortunately, top up the difference between home and international fees. Any candidates who must pay international fees will need to find the additional funding from another source themselves.

Overview

Newcastle Law School at Newcastle University invites applicants for a doctoral studentship in law and the nonhuman. This is an open call and candidates should apply with their own project proposal based on their own interests. The theme of law and the nonhuman can encompass a wide array of projects, including projects, for example, focusing on the rights of nature, on issues relating to ocean law, on nonhuman animal law, on environmental law, or on more theoretical approaches relevant to the theme of law and the nonhuman (see below for more examples). Projects proposals that take a critical theory lens and which seek to centre relationships between the human and the nonhuman are particularly welcome, including those that draw on, for example, feminist, queer, postcolonial/TWAIL/decolonial, posthuman, Marxist, and other critical legal approaches. Interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary projects are strongly encouraged. In addition, projects that focus on global or transnational issues, either wholly or in part, are welcomed.

The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Emily Jones alongside a second supervisor who will be chosen based on the best fit with the project. There is a possibility to have a supervisor from another discipline, depending on the needs of the project. The selected candidate will join a vibrant research community in the School and Newcastle University, which includes the Nonhuman Law Research Group. Candidates are encouraged to apply with a project that they are interested in which can draw on a variety of methods as appropriate to the project design. Project ideas include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical projects that think through nonhuman legal issues in relation to, for example, feminist, queer posthuman, Marxist, TWAIL/postcolonial/decolonial or other relevant theories
• Research proposals that focus on law and art/creative processes, including creative writing and music, and the nonhuman
• Research that centres Indigenous knowledge and nonhuman legal issues
• Discussions of human-nonhuman relationality in the law
• Projects focusing on the theory and application of the rights of nature
• Research into issues surrounding the nonhuman and ocean or water law
• Investigations of nonhuman elements and their regulation e.g. pollution, plastics etc.
• Analyses of nonhuman animal law, particularly situating nonhuman animal issues in the wider context of nonhuman justice
• Projects that bring law and the social sciences/anthropology together which seek to understand nonhuman legal issues in relation to a specific place or context
• Analyses of nonhuman legal issues in conversation with other disciplines including the arts and humanities, the social sciences and the wider sciences (e.g. marine science or environmental science)
• Discussions of geoengineering and other “climate-fix” technologies
• Focused analyses of key environmental law principles from a nonhuman perspective

Number of Awards

1 

Start Date

September 2026

Award Duration

3 years

Application Closing Date

Friday 20 February 2026 at 17:00 UK time

Sponsor

Newcastle University (NUAcT Fellowship)

Supervisors

Dr Emily Jones 

Eligibility Criteria, How to Apply and Contact Details

See Newcastle University’s website for further information.

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