IHBC members with a particular interest in education will be interested to learn that the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is seeking views on proposals to change the arrangements for funded studentships and Collaborative Doctoral Awards, including those in Histories, Cultures and Heritage (closing date 30 November).
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) writes:
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) are developing ideas about the next phase of AHRC funded studentships, which will recruit students from October 2019. As part of this process we are looking for the arts and humanities community to reflect and comment on our proposals.
Postgraduate funding is a core element of the AHRC’s overall portfolio, spending over a third of its budget on supporting students. The AHRC aims to support innovative training environments for doctoral-level research through awards made to Doctoral Training Partnerships. We hope to develop a robust structure where students will have the best opportunities to enable them to complete a high quality research projects and to develop a range of skills, knowledge and understanding necessary for their future employment.
This next stage of development seeks to build upon the strengths and flexibility of the current arrangements as well as simplify the AHRC’s approach to doctoral funding.
Dr Ian Lyne, Associate Director for the AHRC commenting on the plans said: ‘The nature of the PhD in the arts and humanities has evolved considerably in the last few years, with a strong emphasis on providing students with a wide set of skills, and a broad understanding of the variety of careers in which their research training can make an impact. The proposals we are setting out for discussion seek to build on this development, and set out how we see PhD training further evolve.’
We are proposing that in the next phase:
- all AHRC studentships will be fully funded over four years to allow time for collaborative partnership work and broader experiences alongside a challenging research project
- there will be an expectation that all Doctoral Training Partnerships will be collaborative between a number of university partners
- we will provide funding for specialist networks
- there will be no upper limit on the number of studentships to be awarded to a single Doctoral Training Partnership
- there will be a requirement of a minimum level of co-investment from the Universities involved, alongside AHRC funding
Feedback and views are welcome from all interested parties via a Smart Survey. We are hosting two discussion events one in London and one in Leeds; Dr Lyne will outline the current proposals and facilitate discussions with those in attendance about the process and structure of the funding. We will also hold discussion meetings specifically with current AHRC PhD students in order to gain their views.
As part of our on going support for collaborative PhDs, we are also now moving to embed Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CDA) in our existing Doctoral Training Partnerships and Centres for Doctoral Training. This will mean no longer running the stand-alone Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme after the current round, which will start in October 2016. Collaborative doctoral research, where a PhD student is jointly supervised by a University and non-University supervisor, is and will continue to be a key dimension of the postgraduate training supported by AHRC.
We are keen to stress this will not impact on current CDA students and awards, or applications to the current round. There will also be no change to our Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme (which makes awards via major cultural institutions and consortia of non-university organisations). For further information from the AHRC, please contact Danielle Moore-Chick on 01793 41 6021 or d.moore-chick@ahrc.ac.uk
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