The ESRC will audit SGSSS to check that all first supervisors are research active social scientists within a Unit of Assessment (UoA) for which an institution has eligibility.

The following questions (see below) allow us to determine eligibility and SGSSS will audit the information provided carefully. We will remove an application if criteria are not met. Note a second supervisor need not meet our full criteria assuming the first supervisor does. Second supervisors may work within any of the SGSSS 16 partner HEIs. You can find full information about our partner universities online here. 

To be eligible to be first supervisor in any SGSSS competition, supervisors must

1. Meet any institutional requirements of first supervisors that are not covered below. Contact your HEI Admin lead for this information 
2. Have undergone supervisor training within your institution within the last 5 years
3. Hold a research and teaching or research only contract expected to last for the duration of the proposed PhD project
4. Work in a department/school/subject area that is administratively aligned to an eligible Unit of Assessment (UoA) for your Higher Education Institution 
5. Be a research active Social Scientist with output (papers and/or research funding) that is aligned to your unit of assessment  

In order to audit supervisor eligibility, as part of the application process, we ask all first supervisors to provide details of a paper or funded research project that adopts a social science perspective. 

Eligibility rules around numbers of applications per supervisor

We allow a supervisor to make ONE application in each of our three supervisor lead competitions (Steers competition, Open Collaborative competition and the Skills Development Scotland Collaborative competition). This rule applies to any position within a supervisory team. 

Within the Steers competition, given the potential for overlap between the Advanced Quantitative Methods and Datasets steers, we do allow an application to be considered in both of these steers but we expect applicants to make a clear case for alignment to the steer criteria. 

We will not accept applications to the student-led open competition that are based on an application submitted to a supervisor-led competition. For any questions, please email us at team@sgsss.ac.uk 

For our Student-Led Open Competition, SGSSS does not set any limits on the number of times a supervisor can be listed (as first, second, and or third) supervisor. We advise that you check with the HEI Admin Lead at their institution to check if there are any internal restrictions on this, however.   

Guidance on this page was updated 01 November 2024.