Grants and Writing Resources for the University of Leeds

A Leeds undergraduate who started Portuguese as a complete beginner in October 2025 won the Best Portuguese Student Award less than a year later, for poetry. The national prize is organised by the Camões Institute in the UK and Channel Islands. It was the first time Leeds had nominated a first-year student on the strength of creative work.

Undergraduate Research

The Laidlaw Leadership and Research Programme runs over two summers. In the first, a scholar spends about six weeks on a research project supervised by an academic or research team. The second brings a six-week Leadership in Action placement. Scholars receive a stipend or an expenses-paid experience in both summers, along with leadership training and an ethical leadership certificate developed with the Oxford Character Project.

According to the University's information for supervisors, 25 scholarships go to Leeds students in the first year of a three-year degree or the first or second year of a four-year degree. Projects with an international dimension are encouraged.

Masters and Doctoral Funding

Leeds Masters Scholarships are for students from underrepresented groups who pay tuition at the UK rate and hold no previous Masters or doctorate. Each is worth £7,000, taken as a fee waiver or as eight monthly payments of £875. Applicants must also meet one financial criterion, such as an income limit.

For doctoral study, the Leeds Access to Research Scholarship offers up to five awards a year to prospective Home doctoral students from Black, Asian and other minoritised ethnic groups. It covers full fees for three years and a maintenance grant at the UKRI rate for three and a half. The School of Law offered two full doctoral scholarships for 2026/27, one of them the endowed William Harrison award, with Home fees and a maintenance allowance that stood at £20,780 in 2025/26. Selection rests on academic merit.

Writing Support

Skills@Library supports taught students with one-to-one sessions, workshops and webinars. Its online writing guides cover planning, structure, language and style, report writing, reflective writing, and revising and proofreading. A dissertations guide sits alongside a page of dissertation examples. Staff and researchers have separate in-person help and workshops.

Proof-Reading Rules and eTheses

Leeds has two proof-reading policies. The taught policy (version 3.0, approved August 2024) covers coursework and dissertations on foundation, undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes. It places proof-reading with the student as author and bars third parties, paid services among them, from proof-reading assessed work. The exceptions are group work, sanctioned collaborative practice and support for a disability or learning difficulty, and proof-reading given as disability support must be declared on the academic integrity form.

Postgraduate researchers follow the postgraduate research proof-reading policy. A third-party proof-reader, professional or otherwise, may correct spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax and word usage outside specific terminology, and fix inconsistencies in capitalisation, italics, abbreviations, numbering, the formatting of page numbers, headers and footers, and the presentation of citations. Clarity, sequencing and repetition can be pointed out for the researcher to resolve. Comments go in with the comment function, returned as a PDF. The researcher gives the proof-reader a copy of the policy, keeps the marked-up work, and acknowledges the proof-reader on the thesis declarations page. Consulting supervisors first is strongly encouraged.

The final eThesis goes to White Rose eTheses Online as a single PDF approved by the internal examiner, with the title page first. Leeds has withdrawn the hard-bound copy requirement.

For a Leeds research thesis, our proof-readers keep to the scope of the postgraduate research policy: spelling, punctuation, grammar, consistency and citation presentation, with comments returned as a PDF. Under the taught policy, proof-reading of assessed coursework and taught dissertations rests with the student. See our University of Leeds dissertation and thesis editing and University of Leeds essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.

From Our Writing Guides

• How to Avoid Academic Dishonesty: Citing and Quoting Sources
• Literature Synthesis: Moving Beyond the Summary toward Authority
• Writing the Abstract and Title: First Impressions Matter