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Applications are invited for a fully-funded three year PhD to commence in October 2026.

The PhD will be based in the Faculty of Business and Law, and will be supervised by Professor Wolfgang Luhan, Dr Federica Alberti and Dr Georgia Buckle. 

Candidates applying for this project may be eligible to compete for one of a small number of bursaries available. Successful applicants will receive a bursary to cover tuition fees for three years and a stipend in line with the UKRI rate (£20,780 for 2025/26). Bursary recipients will also receive a contribution of £2,000 towards fieldwork.

Costs for student visa and immigration health surcharge are not covered by this bursary. For further guidance and advice visit our international and EU students ‘Visa FAQs’ page.

This funded PhD is only open to new students who do not hold a previous doctoral level qualification.

Many of life’s most important choices are made on behalf of others — parents decide for children, doctors for patients, managers for employees, and policymakers for citizens. Yet while there is a large body of literature how people make decisions for themselves, evidence on how and why decisions change when these are taken for others remains scattered across fields such as behavioural economics and psychology.

This PhD project will bring multiple research strands together to build and test a unified behavioural model of Decision-Making for Others (DMfO), explaining when people act paternalistically, when they respect others’ preferences, and how responsibility, expertise, and accountability, amongst other factors, shape these choices.

The programme is organised into three work packages the student can tailor:

• Theory development and synthesis: systematic review of DMfO across economics, psychology, and other related fields. Map key determinants  and develop a formal model generating testable predictions.
• Experimental testing: Design and run incentivised lab, online, and potentially field experiments comparing self-versus-other decisions under varying accountability, expertise, and information conditions. All studies will be pre-registered, statistically powered, and analysed using advanced econometric methods.
• Applied extension: Collaborate with healthcare and policy partners to test the model in real-world surrogate decision-making contexts, exploring how professional and ethical responsibilities alter behaviour.

The successful candidate will be able to improve their skillset in experimental design, causal inference, and behavioural modelling, and will produce publishable research with both academic and policy relevance.

You will join the Experimental Research Cluster and Behavioural Analytics Research Laboratory at the ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú, benefiting from international collaborations, access to multiple participant pools, and strong mentoring focused on publication, training, and career development.

If you are curious about what drives people to decide for others — and eager to test it empirically — this project offers the ideal platform to do so.

How to apply

We’d encourage you to contact Prof Wolfgang Luhan (wolfgang.luhan@port.ac.uk) to discuss your interest before you apply, quoting the project code.

When you are ready to apply, you can use our . Make sure you submit a personal statement, proof of your degrees and grades, details of two referees, proof of your English language proficiency and an up-to-date CV.  Our ‘How to Apply’ page offers further guidance on the PhD application process.

Please also include a research proposal of 1,000 words outlining the main features of your proposed research design – including how it meets the stated objectives, the challenges this project may present, and how the work will build on or challenge existing research in the above field.

If you want to be considered for this funded PhD opportunity you must quote project code AEF50750126 when applying.