Cohort Development Fund

The Cohort Development Fund (CDF) supports unique initiatives that address both disciplinary and interdisciplinary training needs of doctoral researchers in the arts and humanities. The fund is currently open to staff and doctoral researchers across our 16 member HEIs and allows them to identify gaps in training provision across the sector and to collaborate with their peers to address this. Working on a CDF application provides doctoral researchers with the opportunity to develop their collaboration, team work and networking skills, their funding application skills, event planning and delivery skills, budgeting skills, and evaluation and report writing skills. The CDF encourages the creation of new peer networks, new collaborations between HEIs and new interactions with organisations outside the academy.

In the last five years, we have funded 60 CDF activities involving over 1000 participants from 15 HEIs. Past events range from a multidiscipline conference celebrating women who have shaped Scotland through the creative and artistic industries, to a one-day workshop addressing the difficulties facing doctoral researchers who handle distressing content related to human trauma. Other projects have had long-term effects in developing particular interest groups, such as the inception of a Scottish Medical Humanities Networks. “Getting Cohort Development Funding was a great experience and showed us first-hand what the other side of the conference is like... in terms of the intellectual and theoretical frameworks that underpin them.”

Consuelo Martino, PhD Candidate University of St Andrews

Image Credit: Christian Ferlaino with Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop, photograph courtesy of Christina Voigt

The AHRC is proud to work with world leading universities, such as those in Scotland, and their partners in order to ensure the next generation of academic scholarship continues.”

Anne Sofield, Associate Director of Programmes, Arts and Humanities Research Council