Conduct research that will contribute to a more robust financial system
Start date: September 2027
Duration: Five to six years
Location: London, UK
Tuition fees: Fully-funded
Next application deadline: 2 December 2026
Within the Department of Finance, our world-class researchers engage with academic colleagues and industry professionals to disseminate our research and help influence global industry practice and public policy.
Our doctoral students benefit from:
- the opportunity to help shape a more robust financial system, working in collaboration with practitioners and policy-makers to have real-world impact;
- the broad research interests and expertise of our faculty across our four core themes – Innovation and Asset Pricing, Corporate Finance, Finance and Risk Management, and Financial Analysis.
You may also be co-supervised by faculty in other departments in the School, depending on your research interests.
Benefit from the supervision of eminent world scholars.
Develop rigorous research foundations through our Master's in Research.
Study in London, Europe's start-up capital and a major global business hub.
Specialise in innovative research areas where business interconnects with science, engineering, medicine and technology.
Begin an inspiring academic career, joining some of the world鈥檚 best research centres and universities.
PhD Tabs
The Business School is home to several research centres and institutes that bring together academics and specialists across disciplinary, departmental, faculty and in some cases institutional boundaries. Each centre has been formed to advance study in a particular thematic area, uniting research and practice to enhance the impact of our work.
Grantham Institute for Climate Change
The Grantham Institute leads on world-class research, policy, training and innovation that supports effective action on climate change, driving forward discovery and communicating research to businesses, industry and policymakers to help shape their decisions.
Centre for Financial Technology
The Centre for Financial Technology acts as a hub for the interdisciplinary research that is needed to develop innovation, reveal insights and answer questions. It brings together the activities of academics, start-ups, established industry and governmental organisations.
The Centre for Climate Finance & Investment
The Centre for Climate Finance & Investment works to unlock solutions within capital markets to address the challenges posed by global climate change.
ImperiaCentre of Excellence in Quantitative Finance
The ImperiaCentre of Excellence in Quantitative Finance is a hub for research in Quantitative Finance across all of 海角社区, and a catalyst to further scale up its close ties to the financial industry.
PhD students on the Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) scholarship will undertake 150 hours of teaching assistant duties from year three of the programme. There will be opportunities for PhD students to engage in teaching activities within the Business School’s Finance Masters’.
PhD students within Finance conduct research into a wide variety of areas. Previous thesis topics include:
|
Name |
Thesis |
Supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Artur Anschukov | Essays in Asset Pricing | Dr Harjoat Bhamra |
| Louiza Bartzoka | Essays in Household Finance | Professor Tarun Ramadorai |
| Salim Baz | Essays in Empirical Financial Economics | Dr Lara Cathcart and Professor Alex Michaelides |
| Matilde Faralli | Essays in Climate Finance | Professor Marcin Kacperczyk and Dr Claudia Custodio |
| Adrian Lam | Three Essays on Sustainable Finance | Dr Claudio Custodio and Professor Marcin Kacperczyk |
| Zhengming Li | Essays on Alternative Finance | Professor Gilles Chemla |
| Lu Liu | Essays on Mortgage and Housing Markets | Professor Tarun Ramadorai and Professor Marcin Kacperczyk |
| 'Win' William Monroe | Essays in Financial Intermediation | Professor Jose-Luis Peydro and Professor Marcin Kacperczyk |
| Vitaliy Ryabanin | Market Level and Firm Level Implications of Financial Distress | Professor Alex Michaelides |
| Antoine Uettwiller | Essays in Financial Economics | Professor Tarun Ramadorai and Dr Chris Hansman |
| Giulio Carlo Venturi | Essays on Central Bank Digital Currency: Literature Review and Quantitative Evaluation of Implications for Banking, Financial Stability, and Payment Systems | Professor David Miles and Dr Ansgar Walther |
| Moritz Wiedemann | Institutional Investors' Role in the Energy Transition; Green Innovation and Decarbonization; and the Social and Economic Impact of Opioid Abuse | Professor Patrick Bolton and Dr Chris Hansman |
| Yifan Eva Yang | Essays in Corporate Finance | Professor Franklin Allen and Dr Claudia Custodio |
| Tong Yu | Essays on Open Banking | Professor Ramana Nanda and Professor Franklin Allen |
| Yi Zhang | Text Mining in Climate Finance | Professor Alex Michaelides |
Meet your faculty
Our PhD programme fosters close collaboration between leading Finance faculty and doctoral students, developing their research interests and providing continuous support and guidance throughout the programme. They hold expertise within derivative pricing and hedging, quantitative risk management and asset allocation, financial econometrics, stochastic volatility modelling, credit risk modelling, catastrophe risk analysis, M&A and private equity.