Knowledge Exchange and Partnerships

Partnership is central to how SGSAH operates and this collaborative ethos is pivotal to our Knowledge Exchange Strategy, which connects arts and humanities research to the wider world for mutual benefit. In being part of a national graduate school, our doctoral researchers benefit from the extensive opportunities to collaborate and network across the cohort, and beyond institutional boundaries.

This networked structure also offers our external partners in public, private and third sector organisations a unified access point to arts and humanities researchers across Scottish universities. This has the mutually beneficial effect of extending the impacts of research and the skills of researchers to industry partners, while ensuring that research is framed in terms of industry needs.

In the past five years, we have developed an engaged and supportive network of over 250 organisations of all types and sizes, spanning the public, private and third sectors. This includes our core partners at BBC Scotland, the National Trust for Scotland, the Scottish Cultural Heritage Consortium, the Scottish Parliament and the V&A Museum.

Our partnership activities include collaborative research projects, where PhDs are undertaken with ongoing support and input from a partner organisation working in the doctoral candidate’s field of research. Our Applied Research Collaborative Studentships (ARCS), for example, have benefited from the participation of a wide range of partners, including the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Orkney Museum and Police Scotland.

SGSAH internships and artist residencies have taken place across a range of organisational settings, including the Glasgow Women’s Library, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Deveron Projects and the RSPB. Through our partner connections, we have offered our doctoral researchers a programme of career focussed events and training, with a view to informing employment pathways beyond the academy.