We list 9 fully Funded PhD Arts & Humanities Scholarships for Nigerian Students, with the deadline, study level and eligibility of each one taken from the award's own terms. Most are held in China (3), Australia (2) and Canada (1). 7 state eligibility that includes Nigerian applicants. Awards with a known closing date are listed soonest first.
These awards do not restrict the field of study, so arts & humanities applicants can apply too.
Written from the 9 awards on this page — every figure below is counted from what the awards themselves state. 6 min read.
This page collects 9 fully funded PhD scholarships in Arts & Humanities that are open to Nigerian students. Every award here is labelled fully funded, and every award here is at doctoral level. They are hosted across six countries: China has 3, Australia has 2, and Canada, Germany, Romania and the United States have 1 each.
The list is narrower than it first looks, and that is deliberate. Arts and humanities doctoral funding is scarcer than engineering or medicine funding, and it rarely comes as a standalone cheque. Most of these awards sit inside a university, a government scheme or a research foundation, and the money follows an admission offer rather than replacing it.
Of the 9 awards on this page, 7 are open to Nigerian applicants. None of those 7 names Nigeria or a West African region in its eligibility text; all 7 simply carry no nationality restriction. The remaining 2 do not state their eligibility on the award page at all, so you will need to read the individual listing before you spend money on a transcript or a courier.
That distinction matters when you are paying for documents yourself. An award that is silent on nationality is not the same as an award that welcomes you. Check the host department, the funding body and the country's student visa route before you commit to a courier fee.
The qualification that leads into this level is a master's degree — an M.Sc, M.A, MBA or M.Phil. If your master's is still running, note that many doctoral places are tied to a supervisor or a research group, which means the programme application and the scholarship application often share one deadline. You cannot usually apply for the money first and find a supervisor later.
These are the benefits named in the awards' own text, not a promise that every award covers everything. Read each listing for its own terms.
Notice the shape of that list. Tuition appears less often than living costs, which is the opposite of what many applicants expect. A doctoral award that pays a stipend but not fees still leaves a bill, and a fee waiver with no stipend still leaves you needing rent. Where an award states a duration, take it seriously: one listing here runs for 3 years, and another states 3.5 years with no extension available.
The requirements stated on these awards fall as follows.
The research proposal is the part Nigerian applicants most often under-prepare. A doctoral proposal is not a statement of purpose. It needs a question, a reason the question has not been answered, a method, and a realistic sense of what material you will work with. Four of these awards ask for one, so treat it as the centre of your file rather than an appendix to your CV.
Recommendation letters are asked for just as often. Brief your referees early, give them your proposal and your transcript, and give them a date. An academic referee who writes in the final week writes a short letter.
Only 2 awards here state an English test requirement. That does not mean the other 7 waive it. Many universities waive IELTS or TOEFL where your previous degree was taught in English, but that is a university rule, not a scholarship rule, and it is decided case by case. Confirm it with the admissions office in writing before you book a test date.
Five of the 9 awards carry a stated date, and all 5 of those are still open. Four are undated, and 5 recur annually. October is the busiest month on this page with 3 deadlines, followed by March with 2.
The awards closing soonest are:
Two of those five sit in October, which is close enough that a transcript request submitted this week may not arrive in time. If you are aiming at an October deadline, start the document chain before you start the essay.
The Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship is also on this page. Its deadline is listed as before November 2026, anticipated for the 2026-2027 competition, so treat the date as provisional and confirm it on the listing. Vanier is hosted by a Canadian institution with a quota to host Vanier scholars, which means you apply through the university, not to the scheme directly.
The spread across countries is uneven, and it is worth planning around that rather than applying everywhere at once.
China carries a third of the list, which is unusual for arts and humanities funding and worth noting if your research touches area studies, history, language or comparative literature. The Romanian government scheme is also broader than the rest: it is listed at undergraduate, master's and PhD level, so the doctoral route is one part of a larger competition.
Work in this order. First, confirm eligibility on the individual listing, especially for the 2 awards that do not state it. Second, identify whether the award requires an admission offer first — 1 award here does — because that changes your timeline completely and pushes the scholarship deadline back behind a programme deadline. Third, check whether a supervisor needs to accept you before you submit anything.
Then build the document file. Transcripts from Nigerian universities take time, and courier costs are yours. Order them once, order enough copies, and keep scanned versions for the applications that accept them. Ask your referees in the same week you order transcripts so the two tracks run together.
Finally, match the proposal to the award. Four of these awards ask for a research proposal and 4 ask for recommendation letters, so those two items carry most of the weight. A generic proposal sent to six countries reads as generic to all six.
If you are ready now, the October deadlines are the ones to test your file against, because they will tell you quickly whether your documents are in order. If you are not ready, March gives you more room, and the recurring awards return each year.
Read each listing on this page in full before you apply. The 9 awards here differ in what they pay for, what they ask for and who they will consider, and the only reliable description of any one of them is its own page.
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