Location: Highfield Campus

Closing Date: 30 September

The Web and Internet Science (WAIS) Research Group at the University of Southampton is offering 3 fully-funded PhD studentships to begin in October 2013.

The PhD Studentships will be aligned with the EPSRC-funded collaborative interdisciplinary project SOCIAM: The Theory and Practice of Social Machines http://sociam.org/ The Project’s core objective is to establish the research, methods, tools, networks and collaborations to allow us to understand social machines (computational entities governed by both computational and social processes) in order that they can be designed and deployed by the full range of potential beneficiaries.  The work of the Project is highly integrative and students will be expected to take a holistic approach to their studies. Potential research topics will include:

• Social computing
• Crowdsourcing and human computation
• Human-computer interfaces for social machines
• Technologies for managing decentralization in social machines, in particular semantic technologies and Linked Data
• Technologies for data and process mining and analytics such as social network analysis, social media management, and text mining
• Applications of the above to areas such as healthcare, personal information management, citizen science, and public administration

As a successful candidate for this award, you will:

• Spend the majority of your time at the University of Southampton where you will research and write a dissertation leading to a PhD
• Have a minimum of two academic supervisors from the SOCIAM Project
• Receive a full scholarship and a support grant to attend conferences, summer schools, and other events related to your research each year

The successful candidate is likely to have the following qualifications:

• A 1^st or high 2:1 degree in a relevant discipline and/or upper second degree with a related Masters
• Experience and an interest in multi- and interdisciplinary research

THE AWARD: A full scholarship covers both the cost of tuition fees at the UK/EU rate and a stipend. In the 2013-14 academic year, the stipend is £13,726 which is tax-free and paid in four instalments each year. The studentship is available to support three years' full-time work, subject to satisfactory progress.

ELIGIBILITY: To be eligible for a full scholarship (stipend and fees), a student must have:

Settled status in the UK, meaning they have no restrictions on how long they can stay.

and

Been ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the grant. This means they must have been normally residing in the UK (apart from temporary or occasional absences).

and

Not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education. (This does not apply to UK or EU nationals).

To be eligible for a fees only award:

Students from EU countries other than the UK are generally eligible for a fees-only award. To be eligible for a fees-only award, a student must be ordinarily resident in a member state of the EU, in the same way as UK students must be ordinarily resident in the UK.

Note: These eligibility criteria are based on the Education (Fees and Awards) Regulations 1997 and subsequent amendments, covering England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

TO APPLY:  Please send a covering letter (explaining your interest in the project and how you fit the criteria above) and a CV to Susan Davies, Project Coordination Manager at sdd1@soton.ac.uk

For further information about the Web and Internet Science (WAIS) Research Group, see: http://www.wais.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

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