75 institutions awarded from AHRC's PhD funding scheme

75 institutions have been awarded from the AHRC's (Arts and Human Research Council) new PhD funding scheme. On October 15, it was announced that these will replace the council's Block Grant Partnership scheme, which had awarded to a larger number of individual institutions.

Out of the 75 institutions, a combination of 16 universities and external organisations will provide PhD training through 11 'Doctoral Training Partnerships' and 7 'Centres for Doctoral Training'.

While these partnerships will host doctoral students in arts and humanities discipline, the centres will provide in the council's priority areas like modern languages, creative and performing arts and heritage.

Together it is a combination of 75 institutions, compared with the 96 awarded institutions awarded under the block grant scheme besides 155 partners, including national museums and galleries, arts and cultural organisations and the design council and companies.

A spokeswoman for the council told that, "this new arrangement is expected to provide greater flexibility for universities, as they would award partnerships with a set amount of funding, rather than a specific number of studentships."

"The new arrangements represent a consolidation of postgraduate provision; this consolidation means a significant enhancement of opportunities for sharing resources as well as creating new and richer research training environment for students, both within disciplines, and in new interdisciplinary ways", she added.

The AHRC added that it would continue to support postgraduate training through the Collaborative Skills, Development scheme and Collaborative Doctoral Awards, which equates to a further £6 million of funding per year.