What is the funding [if thats not too rude]?

The majority of research council funding (MRC, BBSRC, ESRC to name a few of the major ones) distribute their funds direct to the Universities who have applied for their studentships. It is then up to the selected University to find the right candidate for the studentship. This effectively means you have no reason to approach the research council for funding, but instead approach those Universities which hold a number of studentships in the department relevant to your interests. Whether the department has a specific project in mind is another matter, but in most cases titles are sufficiently broad to tailor whatever topic to your needs and strengths whilst satisfying the research council at the same time. And whatever project you start on no decent supervisor will ever expect it remain on exactly the same track on which it started.

However, another set of awards put out a call around February time each year, with March or May deadlines. Keep checking council websites at this time of year. In this case it is best that you co-write a proposal with an intended supervisor (more like get a supervisor to write the proposal). These are quite hard forms to fill out on your own, require lots of (personal) references and backup literature, but as such they generally renumerate better than standard studentships dished out on a quota basis described above.

Hi, I wouldn't be applying directly to the research councils myself - the university has to do that, as you said. But if I go to a supervisor with a proposal and they're interested, they can then apply for me for the funding.

golfpro - the funding is EPSRC - you get 6 months funded out of the 12. but even that isn't guarenteed. I find out this month sometime if I'm one of the lucky ones.

lollerskates, in this type of funding (i.e. the University secured the funding from a research council for a broad topic) they won't have to submit an application on behalf of you. They will only select the PhD student and allocate the funding to them. That's why I was saying you should keep an eye on PhD positions advertised with funding throughout the summer (or in some University's it can be any time of the year).

How can you get funding for a PhD without a proposal though?

you either:

- put a proposal together asap (in some cases it doesn't have to be an in-depth one

- apply to scholarships that come as part of a project (in that case you would only need to write a statement explaining why and what part of this project would be relevant to your ideas etc.

As you have already published a paper, supervisors would shortlist you as long as your research project is appropriate. I would contact supervisors first, and see what they say.