Warwick among six Midlands universities to receive doctoral funding awards

At a time when it can feel like STEM subjects are the sole future of higher education, the University of Warwick is set to receive several scholarship fundings for arts and humanities doctoral studies. 

The University is one of 50 across the UK to receive Doctoral Landscape Awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), who have sponsored these awards in the hopes of further enabling successful and collaborative relationships amid doctoral students.  

AHRC Executive Chair Professor Christopher Smith stated: “[The awards] will support the development of talented people and, alongside our other doctoral schemes, contribute to a vibrant, diverse and internationally attractive research and innovation system.” 

In 2023, the AHRC outlined a new approach to funding, noting the rising costs needed to support doctoral study. It focused on implementing a “flexible funding” scheme, in which finances are distributed to fit a university’s needs and strategies, with the intention of creating “new opportunities for innovation in research career development and routes to impact”, as per the UK Research and Innovation organisation.  

It is testament to the excellence of research in the Faculty of Arts

Professor David Lambert

To employ this new form of funding, several “hub” institutions will be directly designated money from the AHRC, with it then being their responsibility to ensure that adjacent universities receive the support needed, and to be responsive to potential changes in those needs. These hubs are then to be re-evaluated every five years, to ensure that funding is continually centred in the best possible location. 

Warwick has been chosen to be the Midlands hub, thusly dictating funds for Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham and several other universities. When asked on why Warwick was chosen, Professor David Lambert (Director of the Centre for Arts Doctoral Research Excellence) said it was “testament to the excellence of research in the Faculty of Arts and to our capacity to continue to attract and train the best postgraduate researchers”. 

Warwick had previously been a part of the Midlands 4 Cities program, a doctoral scholarship scheme that will now close down after awarding its final batch of funding in the coming months. 

Whether this new form of doctoral support will be better for prospective students is currently indeterminable. The new flexible funding may be conducive to a less competitive application process, but at the cost of a smaller amount of direct financial aid to students, as universities attempt to accrue as many promising students as possible.