Opportunities

St Andrews provides a terrific environment for research and is also a beautiful place to live. The Shuker lab is keen to help any of you who want to come to St Andrews to study insect behavioural ecology, or indeed other aspects of evolutionary ecology and genetics. St Andrews has an excellent record of mentoring and promoting the careers of early-stage researchers, and we are especially keen to encourage independent research fellows to apply to come and join us.

Post-doctoral and post-graduate positions funded by research grants will be advertised here when available. See below for some general comments on post-graduate and undergraduate possibilities.

 

Postgraduates interested in Post-Graduate Research degrees (i.e. a PhD or our MSc(Res) degree) will find details of all available positions in the Shuker lab on either findaphd.com or findamasters.com

Details of our MSc(Res) programme in Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution can also be found here: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/biology/prospective/pgr/behaviour-ecology-evolution-mscres/

Please note, full fees and stipend funding are often only available for UK students, so for EU/ROW applicants, some or all of your funding would have to come from external sources. Please feel free to email me for further details about the projects.

To apply, you will need to visit the University’s PhD application website, and follow the detailed procedures given there. From the outset though, I will be interested in your CV, your research interests, and why you would like to join the lab.

However, in addition to funded positions available through St Andrews, there are also possibilities for self-funded or external scholarship-funded PhD positions. I am always interested in discussing projects you may have thought of, especially for research on sex allocation or sexual selection. If you are interested in applying to join us, please contact me (see below) first so we can discuss things. Please remember that we are interested in the evolution of reproductive behaviour first and foremost, and so those wishing to join to the lab would be expected to have a strong background in behaviour, ecology and/or evolutionary biology.

Undergraduates interested in research experience are also very welcome to contact me. The lab has a good record in providing research opportunities that can contribute to publications (see also my teaching page for details on Honours and Masters projects). There are a number of ways for undergrads to fund vacation work (e.g. the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour amongst others). There are also undergraduate summer scholarships run by the University itself (please click on the links for more information). These schemes typically need applications to be prepared early in the year, and often need active input from the student, so if you are interested in vacation experience you should start thinking about this as soon as possible.

Informal enquiries are welcome at any time to discuss any of these possibilities, so please drop me an email at:

[email protected]

Dr David Shuker

Harold Mitchell Building
University of St Andrews
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9TH
Tel: +44 (0)1334 463376