LSE Gender launches new fully-funded Collaborative PhD Studentship with Women's Budget Group

The LSE ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership is pleased to offer a new Collaborative Studentship, commencing in September 2026. The Studentship is the result of a collaboration between the Department of Gender Studies and Women's Budget Group and is titled 'Conceptualizing the Diversity of Care Responsibilities and Understanding the Gendered Policy Implications'.

Against the backdrop of low unemployment, meeting the current Labour Government’s goal of reaching an 80% employment rate will require efforts to move those who are currently inactive into paid employment. The government has been actively trying to reduce the number of people not working due to ill health and disability by targeting their benefit entitlements, but the measures introduced show (1) a lack of understanding of the impact this will have both on disabled people and on carers, many of whom are disabled themselves; or (2) that requiring carers to enter or remain in the labour market will necessitate an increase in formal care provision. While there has been some political awareness that increasing women’s employment requires additional childcare and early education capacity and support, detailed knowledge of support for specific types of care (e.g. for a disabled child) is often lacking.

Despite some scholarly efforts to more precisely define and, to a lesser extent, to operationalize care work, in practice, it remains a portmanteau concept, combining a range of tasks that are carried out to directly and indirectly serve the needs and maintain or enhance the well-being of others. Similarly, the term carer is broad and masks substantial variations in the time and intensity of the care they deliver. A more precise conceptual articulation is needed to understand and document the ways that different kinds of care responsibilities shape the lived experiences of caregivers and care recipients.

As part of the scholarship, the PhD candidate will develop a project which contributes to both the conceptual and empirical aspects of the research topic. It will identify where targeted policies could prevent families with high care needs from falling into poverty and provide better assistance for transitions out of poverty, including their economic circumstances. The project will definitely involve a focus on the UK setting, but might also include, if appropriate and feasible, a cross-national comparative component, depending on the recruited student’s skills and interests.

The studentship will commence in September 2026, with a duration of 3.5 years. For more information on how to apply, visit the application pages.