Why study for a research degree at Glasgow?
The School of Law is widely regarded as a centre of excellence in legal research and teaching. The School received highest possible rating for its research in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise (2008) with 90% of its research output rated as being of international quality in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
The University of Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world. Founded in 1451, it has spent the last 500 years earning an international reputation for research innovation and academic excellence, inspiring eminent alumni such as Adam Smith and Lord Kelvin. It is ranked in the top 1% of the world’s Universities.
You will join a community of over sixty research students from around the world, around eighty taught Masters students and forty-five research active members of staff making for an intellectually vibrant research community.
Our academic staff regularly publish in the leading national and international journals as well as writing influential research monographs and teaching texts. They are also in great demand as government and parliamentary advisers.
You will be provided with excellent facilities to assist you in your studies. All students will have a University email account and access to the internet and a wide variety of databases including Westlaw, LexisLibrary, Hein Online and the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Database. In addition, full-time PhD students will be allocated office space and a desktop computer, as well as free printing.
The University library is one of the largest and oldest in Europe, with 2.5 million books on 12 floors. As a law student you will be supported by our excellent subject librarians, who are available to assist you in finding information relevant to your thesis topic. You will also have access to the Law Workshop, a dedicated law library located within the Law School Building, which contains key texts, case reports and journals and has workspace and wireless internet access.
The Law School offers an advanced legal methods course, which full-time PhD students are required to take during their first year of study and which research LLM students are very welcome to attend. The option to participate in courses on our taught LLM programmes is available to those who wish to do so. You can also participate in training courses provided by the College of Social Sciences Graduate School on subjects including qualitative research methods, statistical analysis, presentation skills and managing your thesis.
For international students the International Student Support Team provide a dedicated advisory service on non-academic matters such as immigration, employment, finance and any other concerns you may have. A dedicated International Student Support Officer provides advice on academic work and English language skills and the University’s Language Centre offers free language and study skills courses. The University has an International Orientation Programme and there are numerous social events for international students and their families.
Living in Glasgow, you will experience a City of Culture in the heart of Scotland. Glasgow provides a perfect mix of Scottish tradition and charm with a vibrant, multicultural social scene. As one of the friendliest cities in the UK, it was recently rated by the Lonely Planet as one of the world’s top ten cities to visit and will host the Commonwealth Games in 2014. The beautiful historic University campus is located in the West End of the city and is home to Scotland’s oldest public museum and the world’s largest collection of works by renowned Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.