PhD students

Prospective PhD students

Information about applying for PhD places and funding is available at the Gravitation and Cosmology PhD projects webpage.  In particular, please do not send applications directly to me. There is no funding available for international (non-UK) students for entry in October 2026.  

To work under my supervision, I usually expect PhD students to have (or expect to obtain) the equivalent of a UK first class undergraduate degree at either BSc or MMath/MPhys level.  If you have a BSc undergraduate degree, then usually a Master's level qualification in either Theoretical Physics or Mathematics is also required.  A strong background in general relativity and flat space-time quantum field theory is necessary; knowledge of quantum field theory in curved space-time is an advantage.   Experience with algebraic and numerical computing (whether using Mathematica, Maple, Matlab or Python) is also required.  

Possible PhD projects

My current research lies in Quantum Field Theory in Curved Space-time. I am interested in three aspects of this: (a) canonical quantization and defining quantum states, (b) computing renormalized expectation values of field operators and (c) using these expectation values to study the backreaction effect of the quantum field on the space-time. For entry in October 2026, I am offering two projects, the details of which can be found via the links below: 

• Backreaction of quantum fields on black hole space-times 

• Charged quantum fermion fields on charged black hole space-times 

Current PhD students

• Jacob Thompson (started October 2022)

• George Montagnon (part-time, started October 2020)

Visiting PhD students

• Alvaro Alvarez Dominguez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) - 2024

• Silvia Pla Garcia (Universidad de Valencia, Spain) - 2021

Past PhD students