Visiting research students
Edinburgh Law School welcomes applications from PhD scholars of other universities to visit the Law School for periods of between one and twelve months.

We are a comprehensive Law School, Scotland’s leading University for legal research, and are based in the heart of the capital city alongside key judicial bodies, the Scottish Parliament and the National Library. We have a diverse and international community of scholars including doctoral students, dedicated early career researchers and combined research and teaching staff.
During your visit we will provide:
- Access to hot desks in our PhD hub, subject to availability.
- Visitor access to IT accounts, on-campus WIFI access, library access (Law and other libraries).
- Two formal meetings with the applicant's academic sponsor at the start and close of their visit. Further meetings with the sponsor and other colleagues can be arranged subject to their availability.
- Introduction to the Law School's PhD cohort.
- Access to all Law School seminar series and other events across the University.
- Opportunity to participate in the School’s PhD writing retreats.
If you are admitted to the University for less than or up to twelve weeks, you will not be charged a tuition fee.
If you are admitted for more than twelve weeks and up to and including twelve months, you will be charged a flat fee rate which will be £955 (session 2024/25).
Applicants are required to:
- prove that they are currently registered for a PhD
- prove that they meet the University's standard PhD entry requirements, including certification of English language skills where relevant.
Find out more about our entry requirements - find an academic sponsor within the Law School in their field
- complete an application form.
Please note that it is your responsibility to secure the correct entry permission (visa).
Visit the University's Edinburgh Global pages for more information on visas
Before applying, you should ensure that you have the agreement of an academic sponsor at Edinburgh Law School.
See the full list of Law School academic staff
Please send a short email to the relevant colleague outlining the following:
- The proposed length and timing of the visit
- Your current work (institutional affiliation, supervisors, research area and research question, stage of PhD [e.g. 3rd year, writing up])
- A short statement on the aim of your visit
Once you have a sponsor's agreement, forward it by e-mail to phd.law@ed.ac.uk. We will then provide you with an application form and guidance on submitting the form and any supporting documentation.
Students wishing to apply for a doctoral visit using the League of European Research Universities (LERU) exchange scheme should contact the Postgraduate Research Office in the first instance at phd.law@ed.ac.uk.
Where visitors do not wish to go through this process, or wish to visit for less than two weeks, the Law School can offer no formal support for visits. However the University Library has arrangements in place for public access to material on site and a number of our Law School events are open to the public. In these cases, it will not be possible to access legal databases or any other electronic resource to which the University of Edinburgh subscribes. If your own institution is a member of the Eduroam network, you may be able to use the University's Wi-Fi network to access the internet via your own devices while you are here.
Find out more about public access to the University's library resources