A vital component of ARC’s mission is the training of postgraduate students. Postgraduate research opportunities at MSc and PhD level are available in the following areas:

• Cosmology including the cosmic microwave background
• Large-scale structure and clusters of galaxies
• Epoch of reionisation
• Extragalactic Astronomy including galaxy formation and evolution
• Relativistic Astrophysics including the study of compact objects

UKZN hosts a node of the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme that is focused on training postgraduate students at the BSc Honours and the MSc level. The application deadline is usually 31 August each year.

Potential sources of funding for postgraduate study at MSc and PhD levels include:

• The National Research Foundation
• The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory
• The National Institute for Theoretical Physics
• Internal funding by UKZN

The closing date for MSc and PhD funding applications is usually in August each year. Interested students should contact staff members working in their area of interest by the start of July, in order to submit a competitive research funding proposal. See our research pages for more information on our main areas of interest.