The Bristol-Macquarie Cotutelle Programme offers postgraduate researchers access to state-of-the-art facilities and academic support at two universities renowned for their world-class research excellence — and enables them to receive a PhD awarded by both bodies. Over the past decade, Macquarie University has firmly established itself as a leader in research training making it an ideal partner for Bristol.

These collaborative international programmes are:

• co-created;
• co-supervised;
• co-funded;
• split-site; and
• co-award PhDs.

Each Cotutelle PhD project is developed individually by the lead co-supervisors from each institution and advertised by their respective Faculties on University and other recruitment websites.

The University's formal arrangement with Macquarie is now in its second phase, with 21 collaborative PhD programmes involving the Bristol faculties of Arts, Life Science, Science, and Social Sciences & Law ongoing or successfully completed. Both universities signed a renewed, institutional-level, Cotutelle Agreement in April 2023. The renewed agreement will fund up to a further 25 postgraduate research students over five years.