PHD COLLABORATIONS

One key way that we develop our relationships with universities and other research establishments is through doctoral training. By building strong academic partnerships, our vision is to foster a new generation of PhD graduates with the skills to work beyond traditional university roles, and to deliver world class applied research that supports heritage sector priorities.

Through our Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) we have co-developed and co-supervised 36 collaborative studentships between 2013 and 2025. Our PhD studentships cover a broad range of historic environment related topics. Some have considered under-represented or poorly understood heritage, such as Sikh or Jewish places of worship in England, and C20 century interwar speculative office buildings. Some have aimed to interpret aspects of the National Heritage Collection, such as the Cold War collections at Dover Castle or the significance of graffiti at historic sites.  Others are promoting measures to address immediate threats to the historic resource, including the conservation of ruined masonry threatened by changing environmental conditions and managing the emotions of heritage loss in the face of coastal erosion.  Others still are looking at technological and methodological developments, including the challenges and potential of managing digital archaeological data and archives or exploring approaches to calculating the value of marine heritage for different sectors of society.

Alongside our CDP, we are also a heritage sector partner and co-supervisor within a number of Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTP) and Centres for Doctoral Training funded by AHRC, NERC and the EPSRC.

Student’s graduating from our collaborative doctoral programmes will have the skills to become the arts and humanities research leaders of the future, able to translate academic thinking into policy and practice – or to bring practice-based insights into academia.

You can read more about our collaborative doctoral programmes here:

Collaborative Doctoral Partnership | Historic England

PhD Studentships | English Heritage

https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/research/back-issues/just-what-the-doctor-ordered/