Department of Sport & Exercise Sciences | PhD Sport and Exercise Sciences

PhD Sport & Exercise Sciences at Durham University

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Durham University's Department of Sport & Exercises leads research to help reduce inequalities, promote social justice and ensure better health and wellbeing within and through sport, exercise and physical activity.

PhD Sport & Exercise Sciences: Three years of full-time or six years of part-time research and writing, at the end of which students produce a thesis of up to 100,000 words. This programme is particularly suitable for students who wish to pursue a career in a University setting in research and/or teaching.

Our research is designed to make a positive impact on people’s lives. All our research is led in a way to address inequalities, promote social justice, and ensure better health and wellbeing through sport, exercise and physical activity.

We seek to address physical inactivity and health inequalities in terms of female health, childhood obesity, disability, and sports participation. We fight to establish the Sustainable Development Goals as a new focus for global and national sport policies and work to shape UK Government policy on women football fans, addressing  inequalities. We advise the UK Chief Medical Officers’ on physical activity and disability; design and promote more effective and inclusive physical activity referral systems, and target health inequalities. We challenge sedentary behaviour messages for being ableist, and create new messages that are inclusive. We provide an evidence-base for strategies to advance athlete health for sports performance and wellbeing, engaging with professional and community sport, industry and global networks.

Employers identified Durham University as a World Top 100 source of the most competent, innovative, effective graduates. Durham University's Department of Sport & Exercise Sciences is consistently also identified as a top World 100 for Sport Sciences department that produces the most employable graduates.

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