Congratulations to Jonathan Horner, who has won a Northern Ireland and North East Doctoral Training Partnership ("NINE DTP") studentship funded by the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy to support his doctoral research, which commenced in October. 

Jonathan Horner won a NINE DTP studentship, and in October 2023, he started a law doctorate. The project addresses the effect of recent statutory narrative reporting requirements on corporate disclosures related to company directors’ statutory obligations to consider specific environmental and social impacts in their decision-making. The aim of the project is to understand corporate responses to legislative reporting requirements in general and those responses as they pertain to environmental and social conduct.  

Jonathan will be supervised by Head of School, Professor Joan Loughrey, as well as Dr Ciarán O'Kelly.  

Jonathan stated “A company’s relationship with their stakeholders, and the regard their directors pay to issues beyond the creation of value for shareholders is subject to significant scrutiny in modern times. My interest within this context is how informative companies’ disclosures on these issues are in light of legislative efforts to mandate both the consideration of these issues and disclosure of that consideration in practice.”  

Professor Joan Loughrey said, “Jonathan’s research project is timely and important, and I am delighted that he has been awarded a NINE DTP award: this is very well deserved and is an endorsement of the quality of his proposed project. The importance of funding support cannot be understated if we are to grow and develop the next generation of social scientists and legal scholars”. 

 We welcome PhD applications from prospective students. Further details on how to apply can be found at https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofLaw/study/postgraduate-research/