News
New AHRC Graduate Awards
Oxford University has received its largest ever funding for research in Humanities after being awarded more than £30 million by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This is also the largest sum ever granted to a single institution by the AHRC.
The funding, which comes through the AHRC’s new Block Grant Partnership Scheme, guarantees research awards for 407 doctoral students and 290 masters students over the next five years. For the Faculty of Music, once the scheme is fully up and running this means a maximum of three new awards each year for doctoral students, and a maximum of three new awards each year for students on taught masters programmes.
The new AHRC Block Grant Partnership will enable Oxford to enhance its long-term planning for postgraduate training and research and give the University greater freedom to select the best home and EU students, irrespective of background.
Professor Sally Shuttleworth, Head of the Humanities Division at Oxford, said: ‘Oxford takes very seriously its role in training the next generation of academics and we are delighted by this vote of confidence by the AHRC in the quality of our graduate provision.
‘The award will enable us to make offers to our top candidates early on in the cycle, and avoid the uncertainties of the current system whereby students do not hear whether they have funding for their studies until a month or six weeks before the start of the academic year. Lack of funding for postgraduate study is a major issue for Humanities subjects nationally; the new system of block grants will bring greater stability, and enhance forward planning for all concerned.’