UKRI announces £564 million for revamped PhD studentships

Thousands of doctoral candidates will be funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under two new schemes that seek to standardise studentship support.

Announcing its first major investments since launching its doctoral framework in January, the UK’s main research funder said £564 million would be allocated through three of its nine research councils to support about 4,800 students over the next three years.

These doctoral students will be funded via either doctoral landscape awards or doctoral focal awards, which replace nine different schemes previously used by UKRI to fund students.

The changes are part of wider reform to how UKRI spends its PhD studentship and early career fellowship budgets – known as collective talent funding and worth £726 million in 2024-25 – which, from January 2024, are being brought together at UKRI-wide level rather than allocated to individual research councils.

The reforms are designed to “simplify and harmonise” the support offered to early career researchers, UKRI has said.

Under the first awards of doctoral landscape and focal awards, which were announced on 13 November, the joint Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Natural Environment Research Council Doctoral Landscape Awards will invest £293 million in more than 2,300 studentships at 21 universities across five cohorts.

Meanwhile, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council will invest £279 million in university doctoral landscape awards, which it will use to support around 2,400 studentships at 40 universities over three annual intakes.

The Natural Environment Research Council will invest a further £11.4 million to support about 90 studentships through four doctoral focal awards across three cohorts.

At least 25 per cent of studentships will be delivered in collaboration with non-academic partners, UKRI said.

Welcoming the new awards, science secretary Peter Kyle said the investments would “back our vitally important higher education sector while supporting more bright students to pursue their talents and in turn deliver the life-saving drugs and clean energy alternatives of the future, that benefit all of our lives”.

“Backing the next generation of great scientific minds to fulfil their potential is crucial to unlocking the discoveries which improve our lives and which keep our economy growing over the long term through highly skilled jobs,” Mr Kyle said.

Dame Ottoline Leyser, chief executive of UKRI, said the investments would help universities “nurture a cadre of creative, talented people to develop their skills and knowledge, to build partnerships and networks, and to pursue the discoveries that will transform tomorrow, with diverse benefits for society and economic growth”.

The awards follow the launch of the UKRI Doctoral Investment Framework in 2023, which structures doctoral support around doctoral landscape awards – which include greater scope for engagement with industry – and doctoral focal awards, which provide funding for research training in specific, tightly focused themes or challenges.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com