Careers and employability

We’re committed to helping you prepare for what’s ahead in your research degree and future career. The University’s Organisational Development and Professional Learning provides you with access to training and development opportunities designed to support your PhD.

You’re entitled to use the wide range of services offered by the University’s award winning Careers Centre, who provide a range of help and advice to assist you in planning your career and making well-informed decisions along the way.

Our Leeds for Life initiative also provides dedicated career support, with personal tutors who offer focused advice and direction, as well as the Leeds Network, for building valuable connections with alumni working in your chosen field.

Links with external partners

You’ll benefit from our close working relationships with a large number of key partners and academic institutions in the UK and overseas. You’ll have the opportunity to attend talks, seminars and conferences where you’ll meet and network with colleagues from industry and academia. Many of our funded projects are in collaboration with our partners.

ESRC White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership

The White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership (WRDTP), accredited by the Economic and Social Research Council in 2016, is a collaboration across the social sciences at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, York, Bradford, Sheffield Hallam, Hull, and Manchester Metropolitan.

The WRDTP delivers excellent supervision, first class discipline and cutting-edge interdisciplinary research and transferable skills training, and a world-class intellectual environment for postgraduate researchers. As a PhD student, it will support you to participate in local, national and international networks of leading academics, non-academic partners, opinion formers, and policy makers.

We produce doctoral graduates with outstanding skills and flexibility, and with the imagination to tackle the thorniest challenges confronting the social sciences today. We also offer a range of research methods and other training which is delivered by each of our partner Universities. The training you'll recieve may be linked to one of our seven interdisciplinary themed Pathways or of interest to all students.

Training is offered in four key areas:

• Discipline-based training: this provides a high-level understanding of academic debates in a specific field

• Professional skills for research leadership: this is training in how academic work is funded, published and translated into practical use beyond the university

• Advanced research methods training: this provides exposure to cutting-edge methods that support students’ own projects and their future research ambitions

• Interdisciplinary Pathway training: this Pathway training is key to the ethos of the WRDTP.  It enables students to articulate how their PhDs contribute to wider societal challenges through work within one of the seven interdisciplinary thematic pathways

It is important to note that ALL Leeds postgraduate researchers are given full access to White Rose training opportunities.