Fab PhD Studentships - Overcoming barriers!

I get contacted fairly often by people asking about what it's like to do a PhD.  I always tell them: if you have a topic that makes you bound out of bed in the morning and a good supervisor, then there's nothing better (and if you have an uninspiring topic or a bad supervisor, there's nothing worse...).

Here are some absolutely fascinating looking PhD's with some brilliant supervisors, which are being advertised by the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York:

White Rose Inter-Disciplinary Disability Studies Network- Complexity and Disabled Selfhood:

1. Imagining Work: Disabled Young People, Narratives on the Boundaries of Work and Welfare – Supervisors Professor Alan Roulstone, University of Leeds and Professor Peter Dwyer, University of York. This studentship will be based at the University of Leeds.
2. Contesting neoliberal education and able citizenship: Some postconventionalist alternatives – Supervisors Professor Dan Goodley, University of Sheffield and Dr Angharad Beckett, University of Leeds. This studentship will be based at the University of Sheffield.
3. Overcoming the barriers: including people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities in research – Supervisors Professor Celia Kitzinger, University of York and Dr Kathy Boxall, University of Sheffield. This studentship will be based at the University of York.

PhD's are hard to do without funding, but sometimes funded PhD's do come along covering not only fees but also providing an income which is usually somewhat better than the minimum wage (and can often be topped up with hourly paid teaching). The PhD's come with 'full award paying tuition fees and maintenance'; I'm informed that 'they are available on a 1+3 basis so will pay for an MA in social research also-so they are worth 80K over 4 years, teaching is normally available also'.  I think they are funded by the ESRC - which often means there are additional opportunities for funding and training.