MSc by Research Studentship: Detection and Analysis of Advanced Phishing Attacks (DAAPA)

Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom

Updated: about 13 hours ago
Location: Oxford, ENGLAND
Job Type: FullTime
Deadline: 29 May 2026

2026 Year, full-time MSc by Research studentship

Eligibility: UK students only due to funding restrictions

Bursary p.a.: £21,805

University fees and bench fees: : £5,338/£2,669

Closing date: 29thMay 2026

Interviews: TBC

Start date: 14thSeptember 2026

Project Title: Detection and Analysis of Advanced Phishing Attacks (DAAPA)

Director of Studies: Prof. Rachel Harrison

Supervisors: Dr Manny Niri

Entry requirements:

Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in Computing, Computer Science or acceptable equivalent qualification.

English language requirements: Excellent written and oral communication required

Project Description:

In this project our aim is to develop a novel, context-aware, domain-specific NLP framework that protects systems against real-world, low-volume Business Email Compromise and spear-phishing attacks. The objectives are:

  • To identify and characterise the distinct linguistic and pragmatic and AI-generated stylistic features utilised in contemporary advanced phishing attacks across diverse corpora.
  • To develop and curate a large-scale, high-fidelity dataset of malicious and benign communications.
  • To design and implement the Domain-Adapted Transformer Model incorporating Hybrid Linguistic-Contextual and Anomaly-based features.
  • To evaluate the model against traditional and general deep learning models using comprehensive de facto metrics.
  • To develop an interpretability mechanism to attribute classification decisions to specific linguistic features, and so enhance model trustworthiness and operational utility

    • Application process

    When completing your application Online via the above ‘Apply’ button, please note the following:

    Title: MSc by Research Studentship – Detection and Analysis of Advanced Phishing Attacks (DAAPA)

    Please be advised that the selection process may involve an interview.

    Select the following course: MSc by Research in Computing

    Please include the following documents:

    • Details of two referees or two full reference letters (at least one from an academic source)
    • A research proposal
    • Copies of your previous degree certificates and transcripts
    • A scan of your passport
    • A CV
    • A cover letter

    For informal inquiries about the project/application process contact Dr Matthias Rolf (mrolf@brookes.ac.uk ) or Prof. Rachel Harrison (rachel.harrison@brookes.ac.uk ).


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