St Andrews and Macquarie launch our biggest Global doctoral scholarship programme to date
The Global doctoral scholarships programme
Since 2020, the University of St Andrews and Macquarie University have operated a jointly funded Global doctoral scholarship programme, designed to create a platform for joint PhD projects and to foster wide research collaboration. Within the scheme, the institutions provide tuition fee funding and stipends for successful supervisor-led projects based around a mutually agreed priority research area annually, and typically facilitating two PhD projects each call. Eight co-funded projects have received scholarship support through the scheme, with a ninth due to begin in the autumn of 2024. The most recent Global doctoral scholarship award in the scheme was to a cross-disciplinary project in Psychology & Neuroscience and Medicine.
Now for 2025-2026 entry, we can announce a significant new joint venture in which there is an additional commitment of four funded positions, providing six total co-funded PhD projects between Macquarie and St Andrews. This cycle, to recognise the significance of global challenges in sustainability, and likewise to target critical institutional priority areas, the call for project applications focuses on sustainability widely conceived. By recognising mutual institutional commitment to research in this SDG priority area, Macquarie and St Andrews aim to deepen existing research collaboration and build connections across the Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences. The Global doctoral scholarships call is currently open for supervisor-led projects with a deadline for submissions on 23 September 2024.
In confirming the enhanced relationship under this Global doctoral scholarship programme, Prof. Frank Müller, AVP (Dean of Learning and Teaching) and Provost said, “At St Andrews, we are excited to seize this opportunity to deepen our successful partnership with Macquarie through this joint initiative. I am delighted that we are able to support a cohort of six researchers to generate new insights on sustainability across all disciplines and across our two institutions. This will not only deepen and broaden a strategically important link between two leading universities, it will lay the foundations for further research collaborations in this vitally important field.”
Alongside the creation of a cohort of joint PhD students under the Global PhD scheme, this area of our partnership aims to develop new research connections and to deepen existing links. There is a mutual commitment to support growth across multiple activities, to create research concentrations of international significance and to identify and harness shared values in research, research training, and research-led education.
Macquarie and St Andrews
Macquarie University and St Andrews have been close partners for over fifteen years, working together across education, research, and professional services remits.
Macquarie University was established on a campus in the northwest of Sydney in 1964 as a Higher Education institution with close associations with industry built on collaboration between students, academics, industry and society. A research-focused institution, Macquarie is one of the highest ranked research universities in Australia and amongst the top 1% worldwide, and they aim to enhance their international position through a culture of transformative learning in a research-enriched environment.
Their ethos of prioritising innovation and working with partners to contribute to the solutions needed to meet the challenges of the world mirrors St Andrews’ own strategic aims to be a world-leading university focused on addressing global challenges and the institutions share a sense of the responsibility to respect their own local communities and environments.
Our partnership in profile
Synergies exist across multiple areas. For example, each institution has identified Sustainability as a key feature which interacts with multiple areas of its strategy and ambition. At the research level, connections across the academic disciplines at Macquarie and at St Andrews can help to find solutions to the issues facing the world, whilst building mutually supportive academic and professional collaborations which can be long-term and rich.
The two universities have similar ranking status worldwide. In the QS world university rankings for 2025, Macquarie is 133rd with St Andrews 104th. In the Times Higher Education world university ranking for 2024, the two institutions are 180th and 193rd respectively; and in the Leiden 2024 ranking of percentage of publications in the top 10% of their field, Macquarie are ranked 200th to St Andrews’ 180th.
Collaborative programmes in education and research
As partners, we have operated a popular exchange programme for several years. In the decade 2012-2022, the universities exchanged 20 students at undergraduate level in a partnership which continues to provide opportunities for first-degree students to learn in different environments in diverse subjects, including Classics, English, History, Italian, Economics, Neuroscience, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Physics & Astronomy.
In 2009, we established our first framework programme to support joint PhDs together, with the first enrolment in Biology in 2011. This is one of only three programmes at St Andrews where, in partnership with a collaborating institution, Global PhDs are offered across all faculties. Since its inception, 11 jointly supervised PhD students have enrolled in the programme in multiple disciplines including, History, Social Anthropology, Psychology & Neuroscience, Biology, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Physics & Astronomy.
Research interaction
Research partnership has been a focus of the relationship throughout our association. There have been 139 co-authored publications since 2019, with 208 total co-authors across both institutions. Of those, 29 co-authored publications have 10 or fewer authors in the same period.
As with other areas of collaboration, co-authorship interacts with several different academic disciplines at each institution, featuring Biochemistry, Genetics, & Molecular Biology; Physics & Astronomy; Earth & Planetary Sciences; Chemistry; and Agricultural & Biological Sciences.
Co-authored publications between Macquarie and St Andrews have an increased field-weighted citation impact as compared to those St Andrews and Macquarie alone respectively rising to 12.72 for multi-authored publications (compared to 1.62 and 1.79 for St Andrews and Macquarie independently) and 1.81 for publications with ten or fewer co-authors (compared to 1.17 and 1.43).
Professional associations
As well as exchanging students, collaborating on joint PhDs, and working together in research, the two universities have additional close links in professional services and at senior level. Over the past six years, several senior leadership visits have taken place between the two universities to develop our links.
The Global Office at St Andrews and the Graduate Programs Office at Macquarie work closely together and have developed a strong relationship through which they support mutual programme development and professional operations. Respective offices see the manner in which their programme is run as a hallmark for collaboration with other partners and recently shared best practice reflections at a Macquarie-run international partner workshop in Sydney. Colleagues interact across areas to do with staff and student professional and career development, for student mobility, and have shared expertise in areas such as admissions and recruitment.
For more information on the partnership and details on how to engage with any of the activities mentioned, please contact the Global Office at [email protected]