About the Programme
Each PhD studentship offers hands-on experience, interdisciplinary training, and close collaboration with elite Para athletes and practitioners. Our goal is to ensure that innovative research translates into real-world impact, improving performance, safety, and athlete well-being.
The studentships are anchored around three central themes:
- Interaction with equipment and environment
- Female athlete health
- Wearables and technologies
This initiative builds on a strong foundation of research already underway: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/phc/ and two new projects that also start October 2025.
- Quantifying the physical and tactical demands of wheelchair tennis on different court surfaces;
- Investigating the physiological and biomechanical demands of wheelchair rugby game play: Implications for load monitoring.
We invite prospective applicants to explore the following exciting five topics, the sixth will follow shortly:
- Comfort, Fit and Function: The Role of Sports Apparel and Equipment in Female Para-athlete Performance
- Innovating ParaSport: The Role of the Athlete-Equipment-Playing Environment Interface
- Wearable Technologies to Enhance Para Sport Performance
- Travel, Sleep and Fatigue for Long-haul Performance
- Thermoregulation, Environmental Stress and Sweat Responses in Para Athletes
The application portal is ‘live’ now and closes 29th May 2025.
We encourage interested candidates to review these opportunities in detail and begin preparing their applications.
These projects exemplify our commitment to excellence and innovation in Para sport research at Loughborough and to continue our #WorldClass excellence on this topic.
See: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/clusters/parafit/studentships/
Online portal: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/phd-opportunities/