Closing date: 20 May 2013

You are invited to apply for a funded 3.5-year PhD studentship to start in October 2013. If your application is successful, you will join the School of Computing and Communications and be supervised by Dr. Jose M. Such.

Privacy is one of the major concerns with regards to Social Media. However, privacy controls of mainstream Social Media are very complex, too difficult to understand, and time-consuming. This makes most users unable to cope with the complexity of privacy management in Social Media, which has led to numerous incidents in which people have lost their jobs, have been cyberbullied, or have lost court cases due to the inappropriate communication of personal information though Social Media. To address this, you will investigate automated approaches to aid users manage their privacy in Social Media by alleviating the complexity of setting privacy controls.

We are immensely proud of our postgraduate research community in the School, and of the internationally significant reputation they help us achieve. You will be encouraged to participate fully, targeting and presenting your work at international conferences, and you will have excellent opportunities to collaborate nationally and internationally through our academic partnerships and links with industry. Moreover, research in Computer Science at Lancaster University is consistently considered to be in the top ten of UK universities.

Academic Requirements: You should have a First Class UK honours degree, or equivalent, in a relevant discipline such as Computer Science, Software Engineering, or Communications.

Funding: The studentship is for 3.5 years and provides a stipend at the RCUK rate (for 2013/14 this is £13,726 per year) and fees at Home/EU fee‐level (overseas students may be recruited provided the difference in fees can be covered by the student or a sponsor – see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/postgraduate-fees-and-funding/).

The closing date for PhD applications to be considered for the studentship is 17 May 2013. If you are shortlisted, you will be contacted within a week of the application deadline.

How to apply

Send e-mail with the following documents to Dr. Jose M. Such (j.such@lancaster.ac.uk):

1. Your CV (2 pages max.)
2. Digital copies of Academic Transcripts for Undergraduate and where applicable Postgraduate degrees. Note that, for transcripts in languages other than English, a certified English translation will be required.
3. One personal statement including, at least: (i) your interests in the topic of the PhD; (ii) your knowledge about the topic; (iii) and ideas on how you would approach it.
4. For those for whom English is not their first language, copies of English language test results.

Please do contact Dr. Jose M. Such (j.such@lancaster.ac.uk) for an informal discussion about the PhD studentship, for any enquiries you might have, or for further details.