Student Development Funding

(Students awarded AHRC funding and beginning their studies in September 2019 will apply for the following training opportunities.)

The following funding is only available for students who are in receipt of funding from an AHRC DTP Studentship and began study up to and including September 2018.

Aims

This funding is primarily available to extend the duration of PhD studentships flexibly and responsively – i.e. to support an appropriate range of training for individual AHRC-funded students according to their individual needs. It can also be used to support the additional costs associated with training.

The funding must be used to support needs-based training for individual students, in the form of development opportunities beneficial to a student’s doctoral research &/or personal development as a researcher.

SDF is not available to provide extended stipend for thesis pending/writing up.

The total funding available to each full-time cohort has been calculated on the basis of a six month extension per funded studentship. This is NOT an automatic allocation and students may apply for and receive, more or less than this notional amount over the course of their programme of study. Awards will be made on the basis of strategically-argued applications; decisions on funding will be taken by SGSAH, monitored andreviewed annually by our Doctoral Researcher Committee. Any extension to the period of study must be agreed by the home HEI and confirmed in the application.

SDF can cover funded extensions to PhD study for:

• Placements/internships of up to six months duration in total over the period of the studentship: where a student is undertaking a placement that is not an integral part of the research project.
• International placements to develop language skills: where a student requires an extended period overseas to develop specific language skills to undertake their research project successfully.  It is expected that the need to develop language skills will have been agreed at the start of the award, i.e. in these cases the student’s initial offer will be for more than 3 years’ funding.
• Specific skills development: here extended time is intended for students who need to acquire additional skills, for example high-level methodological skills, or significant and demanding new discipline skills e.g. paelographical, papyrological or epigraphical skills, or where the research cannot be undertaken in full without fieldwork being undertaken which presents significant challenges, for example, of a methodological or practical nature.
• Archival work/fieldwork: although we would normally expect significant fieldwork &/or archival work to be built into the original proposal and extensions agreed at the start of the project, we recognise that these needs may become apparent as the research progresses.
• Impact activity: e.g. planning and delivering a public engagement project of significant scale.

SDF can also be used to support the additional costs of:

• Conference: presenting papers at conferences where these are justified as offering key skills development opportunities for researchers. We recognise that this is a particular area of interest for our students.  Our funds are limited and to make sure they are focused on high quality skills development opportunities we will require any applications to be specific about which additional skills will be developed through additional training opportunities, for instance: a relevant visit to an archive; workshops/masterclasses; training events attached to the conference.
• Fieldwork: for example travel &/or subsistence costs associated with fieldwork.
• Impact activity: e.g. materials, equipment, room hire etc.
• High-cost additional training external to SGSAH: including travel & accommodation costs where these are fully justified in the proposal

Where a student is in receipt of ‘fees only’ funding, they may also benefit from both extensions to PhD training & additional costs of training funded from the SDF, e.g. KE activity, fieldwork etc, provided this does not take the form of a stipend award.

How to apply

Please contact the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities directly for application details and deadlines for 2020/21.

admin@sgsah.ac.uk

Conditions of grant

You will be required to submit a short reflective piece within three months after the end of each funded activity. These may be used by the SGSAH as case studies in the future. You may include links to blogs, films, websites etc which have been created as part of or as a result of the training &/or impact event.

You will also be required to submit a financial statement alongside your reflective piece to confirm that the funding was spent for the purpose allocated.