Course summary

A PhD in Exercise, Nutrition and Health equips students with the skills and experience to apply research methods and the tools to critically examine some of the most pressing contemporary issues and problems being experienced in physical activity and/or nutrition research, practice and/or policy. Students are encouraged to develop a topic of interest that directly relates to their own background or practice experiences, or is of wider interest and relevance to the science underpinning the promotion and maintenance of health of populations, via physical activity and/or nutrition, either in UK nations or overseas. Students will be supported to develop research questions and design a study that enables them to rigorously research their topic of interest and make an original contribution to the knowledge base of physical activity and/or nutrition in relation to public health. Topics may directly explore policy or practice issues, or contribute more broadly to physical activity and nutrition knowledge, working with specific population groups and communities, addressing systems of inequality and social disadvantage. Where appropriate, students are encouraged to work in collaboration with relevant organisations and/or user and interest groups to ensure their research outputs and key findings can directly inform policy, professional development, practice and service delivery. Supervisors in Exercise, Nutrition and Health bring diverse interests across epidemiology (for example, associations between physical activity/diet and a range of chronic diseases across population groups); physical activity and dietary assessment (for example, development of indices to assess adherence to dietary patterns); the development and evaluation of physical activity and dietary interventions and/or services (for example, community programmes, school settings); and behaviour change (including the wider determinants of physical activity and diet and the psychological underpinnings of physical activity, nutrition and health). Supervisors also have diverse expertise in research methods, such as qualitative methods (for example, informing and evaluating the development of interventions or service delivery); secondary data analysis (for example, using nationally representative population surveys and large prospective studies/big data); and scoping and systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the evidence base in physical activity and nutrition. The school is an exciting environment for graduate studies, and PhD students become an integral part of our research community; we welcome graduate students from the UK and abroad to join our diverse and highly-rated research team. We welcome new PhD students all year round. However, the largest intake is in September each year with a secondary intake in January. We strongly recommend applicants to consider either a September or January start.