Applications are now open for our ACROSS PhD Studentships programme!
Are you interested in being part of a global clinical research team between UK and South Asia?
ACROSS (Affordable Cardiac Rehabilitation: An Outreach Inter-disciplinary Strategic Study) aims to develop a culturally adapted and affordable home-based rehabilitation programme for people with multiple long term health conditions including heart disease and anxiety/depression. We aim to evaluate the acceptability, clinical effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of the programme’s implementation in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan to determine its scalability and sustainability.
We are looking to recruit 8 students to undertake fully funded, full time 3-year PhD projects in a variety of areas associated with our research including opportunities for exploration of methodology issues in global trials and understanding the challenges of co-designing home-based interventions in lower- and middle-income countries. Supervision will be provided by a combination of South Asia and UK based senior researchers and clinicians.
Professional development training and support
Students will become members of the Global ACROSS programme and also NIHR faculty, offering a broad spectrum of training activities and networking opportunities beyond their host Research Organisation. In addition to academic supervision and host University support, students will be supported by training materials available through the ACROSS training hub and the research consortium. This virtual hub will include an online space for PhD students to regularly interact and to engage in training webinars provided by ACROSS team members and other topic experts.
Students will be encouraged to join relevant ACROSS working groups, where they will have the opportunity to work with early career and senior academic staff from relevant and complementary research and clinical fields. We will also provide a series of grant writing workshops to further prepare students for their future academic careers. Furthermore, we will link our students with other relevant research initiatives including the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership - Network Hubs: TMRP (mrc.ac.uk)
Projects currently open for applications – deadline Friday 5th September 2025
Click on a project to visit its page on FindAPhD.com and apply:
•Digital Interventions for cardiac rehabilitation (based in Pakistan) – University of Glasgow
•Rehabilitation for multimorbidity (based in Pakistan) – University of Glasgow
Projects opening for applications soon
•Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs) for Sustained Behavioural Change in Cardiac Rehabilitation (based in Pakistan) – University of Manchester
(Application link coming soon)
•Coping mechanism/strategies and health related quality of life in cardiac patients (based in Bangladesh) – University of Manchester
(Application link coming soon)
Important Information
Matriculation will be with either the University of Glasgow or the University of Manchester however students are expected to be based at our host institutions in Bangladesh or Pakistan. These studentships are fully funded – UK university registration fees are covered, and stipend payments will be provided at the applicable local rate.
For more information or to propose your own project idea, please contact global-across@glasgow.ac.uk.
Application process
Prospective students will be required to complete an application form by following the links above. Interviews are expected to be held online during September 2025.
Host institutions
Click the institution logo to visit their website:
