Schools, centres and institutes

Centres and Institutes are often the incubators of our most cutting-edge and prestigious research, and many of them transcend disciplines and Schools in terms of their membership and the themes they address. 

Our key priority is to ensure that ambitious and successful centres have appropriate support, guidance and governance structures to enable them to flourish.

CAHSS centres strategy

Our centre guidance was revised and extended in 2018 to include new criteria for establishing centres to set a higher threshold for approving centres.

This was coupled with more rigorous review processes, to ensure that our many centres across CAHSS continue to achieve their goals. We are in the process of rolling this out to both new and existing centres, along with newly developed guidance on mechanisms for supporting and incentivising more ambitious grant applications in centres. Further development is planned, specifically for supporting centres in applying for external funding, and developing a tool for ensuring we recognise and reward successful activity. Both combine as a basis for incentivising and rewarding more ambitious grant applications in our centres.

Through a series of events with centre directors, we are identifying support, development and training needs of centre directors in setting more ambitious plans for grant capture and establishing peer support.

Together with the Edinburgh Research Office (ERO), we are promoting a model for planning and sequencing applications, which is being disseminated through individual guidance and support.

Guidance and processes for establishing centres (Intranet – Univeresity log in required)

Research Centre Governance Guide for Schools (Intranet – University log in required)

ERO documents to support funding strategies and portfolio funding models (Intranet – University log in required)

Cross-College Institutes

We continue to work with existing CAHSS-wide institutes to provide opportunities for new collaborations across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The Edinburgh Futures Institute will offer a space for methodological innovation, critical engagement and new partnerships in relation to data and society, straddling research and knowledge exchange in all of our schools.

The Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH) will continue to foster exchange across Schools and internationally in cutting edge areas of research, through its visiting fellows and post-doctoral fellowships, and its thematic initiatives.

IASH will continue to play a key role in the development of the CAHSS research themes, hosting events, supporting key areas such as the Medical and Environmental Humanities, GenderED and RACE.ED.

Next: Funding