Grants and Writing Resources for Singapore Management University
On 24 April 2026, four LLB students from the Yong Pung How School of Law won the Sports Law Arbitration Moot, LawInSport's international moot, at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. Three were in their third year at the time and one in the second. The SMU media release notes that the win kept a title the school first took in 2025, and the SMU Newsroom called it a back-to-back victory.
Taking a Paper to a Conference
Full-time undergraduates of any nationality and any degree can apply for SMU Partial Conference Funding when they write and present a research paper at an academic conference. It pays part of the registration fee, lodging and airfare, up to $1,000 a trip for conferences outside Southeast Asia and up to $500 for those inside it. The final sum depends on the conference's standing, the quality of the paper and the student's role. A student can receive it twice during a degree, and it must be repaid in full if the student withdraws from the conference.
Those papers often start in class. Bachelor of Social Science students can take research courses for credit: an Independent Study, a two-term Senior Thesis that ends in a defence, or Guided Research in Social Science, where a small group works on a faculty-led project.
Doctoral Fellowships
The College of Graduate Research Studies groups three awards for current PhD students as the CGRS Fellowship Awards. The Presidential Doctoral Fellowship rewards sustained research excellence in a field. The Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship goes to work that spans schools or joins research areas, and the Impact Doctoral Fellowship, new in 2026, goes to research with a benefit to communities, industries or policy. For AY2026, each came with a higher monthly stipend and a research trip worth $4,000. Students apply with a resume, a candidate statement and a letter from the supervisor, and a committee decides which fellowship each recipient gets.
The college also runs the SMU Rising Scholars Fellowship, a five-day campus programme for bachelor's and master's students thinking about an SMU PhD. Up to 25 are chosen each year. For the 2027 cycle, SMU pays SGD2,000 at the end of the programme toward travel and living costs for participants who are not Singapore citizens or permanent residents, or who live outside Singapore. Applicants may also submit papers for the Singapore Rising Scholars Conference, which has a Best Paper Award.
Where Student Work Appears
Lexicon, a student club in the law school, has published the Singapore Law Journal (Lexicon) once a year since 2021. It prints commentaries, case notes and articles on recent developments in Singapore law, the common law and international law.
The library's Student Publications collection holds books by student bodies such as SMU Apolitical, entries from essay competitions and research papers written by students.
Help With Writing and Theses
The Centre for English Communication trains student Communication Coaches who read drafts of term papers, Writing and Reasoning assignments and presentation slides. Consultations are free, one per assessment, and the coach reviews only the draft sent in advance. A walk-in clinic in the Li Ka Shing Library offers 10-minute chats.
After the oral defence and final revisions, PhD and master's candidates record the thesis in IRIS and upload the final version. The library checks the record once graduation requirements are confirmed, then posts the PDF to InK, either at once or after a six-month or one-year embargo. Abstracts of past SMU dissertations can be browsed by programme and graduation year. The library's thesis writing guide offers research librarians for citation questions and points to the dissertation format guidelines on OASIS.
Before a term paper, thesis or dissertation goes in, our editors can give it a final check for grammar, consistency and format. See our Singapore Management University dissertation and thesis editing and Singapore Management University essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with Singapore Management University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your SMU writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.