Scottish AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards (DLA) – Training Hub
**Please note: this page is still under construction**
Seven Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) across Scotland are offering AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award (DLA) PhD studentships in the Arts & Humanities, for start dates in October 2026. The HEIs offering awards are the Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, Stirling and Strathclyde. Please note that each HEI has its own application process and guidance for the DLA studentships; links to each HEI’s specific information can be found further down this page.
It is planned that SGSAH will be the home of the AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award Hub, which will offer collective doctoral training and development activities to the funded cohort of DLA PhD studentship holders, sometimes in partnership with broader communities of Arts & Humanities doctoral researchers across all 17 of SGSAH’s member HEIs. More details of the projected training are detailed below, in order to assist applicants in developing their training and development plans.
*Please note that some details of the Hub activity may change, pending confirmation of Hub funding from the AHRC. Any changes will be clearly flagged here.
Institution Specific Application Guidance
For more information about the application process for each Scottish HEI offering AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards Studentships, please visit the following pages on the respective HEI website:
- University of Aberdeen [url; application deadline tbc]
- University of Dundee [url; application deadline tbc]
- University of Edinburgh [url; application deadline tbc]
- University of Glasgow [url; application deadline tbc]
- University of St Andrews [url; application deadline tbc]
- University of Stirling [url; application deadline tbc]
- University of Strathclyde [url; application deadline tbc]
Please note that most applications will be due before the end of 2025. Any queries about applications should be directed to the individual HEI.
About the Doctoral Landscape Award Hub
Purpose
The DLA Hub for Scotland, delivered through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH), will provide an innovative, inclusive and responsive doctoral training and development platform for Arts and Humanities students. Building on the successful foundations of two previous AHRC Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTP1 and DTP2), the DLA Hub will enhance the doctoral experience and further extend its relevance and impact at local, national, and global levels.
The Hub will support cohorts of world-class doctoral researchers to contribute meaningfully across academic, creative, public, and professional spheres. It will:
- Provide cohort-responsive training that complements institutional provision and promotes academic excellence.
- Offer interdisciplinary, methodological and creative development through three skills development spokes: Concepts and Critiques, Empirical Enquiry, and Creative Practice.
- Strengthen knowledge exchange (KE) by sustaining and developing internships and collaborative partnerships, including engagement with the existing KE Hubs (Heritage, Creative Economies, Citizenship & Policy).
- Embed equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) to ensure accessibility and equity of opportunity.
- Leverage existing national resources and infrastructure to enable a seamless transition from DTP2 and through SGSAH and member HEIs sustain a world-class Arts & Humanities doctoral training environment in Scotland.
Training and Development Overview
The DLA Hub training offer is projected to comprise of three key and mandatory components, each complementing and enhancing the offer in individual HEIs, leveraging collaboration within the DLA Hub and through the wider SGSAH consortium. The components are:
- Cohort Leadership Programme: the opportunity to come together as a cohort group to foster collaboration, benefit from sector-leading A&H training from academics across Hub HEIs and build networks.
- Specialised A&H Training: academic training will be arranged along three broad conceptual and methodological ‘spokes’: Concepts and Critiques (ideas, concepts, theories and framework); Empirical Enquiry (methodologies, including archival research, digital humanities, and social research); and Creative Practice (all forms of creative practice as research, creative methodologies and engagements with creative industries).
- Knowledge Exchange: building on the strong KE relationships that SGSAH has built up over a decade, the Hub will offer training opportunities for students to develop skills, build networks, deliver impact, and understand related sectors, and for organisations to benefit from skilled doctoral researchers through SGSAH’s successful internship programme. Researchers will be supported to demonstrate the value of A&H to society, industry, and other disciplines.
Cohort Leadership Programme
The Cohort Leadership Programme will bring the whole cohort together across HEIs and disciplinary areas, which is essential for leadership, development and networking. A stepped training and development programme will be delivered by a range of in-person, hybrid and online events, including short sessions, day-long and residential events. The Cohort Leadership Programme will build thematically through successive years, with combinations of year specific and multi-year activity, the latter cascading experience across cohorts. These will be delivered through a three-step framework:
- Year 1 GETTING STARTED: inducting students to the Hub and enabling them to embark on their PhD
The centrepiece will include a residential event held early in the academic year, introducing Year 1 students to the Hub and its full range of training activities, providing cohort-building opportunities, and discussing training needs and priorities. Student representatives from Years 2 and 3 will be invited to speak about their experience of the Hub (or, in Year 1, from existing DTP2 students) and of using Hub funding to develop student-led cohort activities. This induction will complement a broader SGSAH Welcome event , which highlights the wider opportunities available to all doctoral researchers in Scotland through SGSAH, supported by the Scottish Funding Council and extending to SGSAH’s full HEI membership.
- Year 2-3 RESEARCH WITH IMPACT: focuses on honing the skills to deliver the core PhD research and realise wider societal benefits
All cohorts will come together for a residential event timed as part of the broader SGSAH Summer School, enabling wider networking opportunities across DLA cohorts and beyond. Topics covered will include three-minute thesis presentations, research internships, knowledge exchange and other opportunities. Year 2 and 3 students will share their research and KE activities via posters, stands, and short presentations.
- Year 3-4 TRANSITIONS BEYOND THE PHD: in the final two years, the Cohort Leadership Programme pivots to focus on future careers and outputs within and beyond academia
Events in Years 3 and 4 will cement networking; support planning for postdoctoral career pathways, both academic and non-academic; prepare for submission, examination and any post-examination corrections; focus on outputs (including publishing) from the thesis and creative practice; introduce postdoctoral networks and opportunities; and facilitate alumni connections.
These proposals build on high-quality events developed under DTP2, adapted to the changed nature, scale and resourcing of the cohort, and aligned with sectoral policy such as the UKRI New Deal for Postgraduate Research.
Skills Development Training
In addition to core training for the entire cohort, the Hub will also offer specific grounding in Arts & Humanities research skills. This offer will complement the disciplinary expertise and individual training plans developed and delivered within HEIs. It will be structured via three ‘Spokes’, allowing the Hub to respond to cohort needs while maintaining consistency and promoting awareness of the full scale and scope of A&H research. The ‘Spokes’ are:
- Concepts and Critiques: training focused on the ideas, methods, concepts, and frameworks that underpin research. This element of the programme will hone researchers’ ability to work confidently, fluidly, and in a cross-disciplinary manner.
- Empirical Enquiry: training to develop the cutting-edge skills necessary for data gathering for A&H research, whether through archival enquiry, working with images and objects, through surveys or interviews, or quantification, within ethical frameworks.
- Creative Practice: training exploring all forms of creative practice as research and creative methodologies, including writing, composing and performing arts within creative industry contexts.
Training events will often straddle more than one spoke and/or discipline; where events are grounded in a particular discipline they will be designed to benefit students from beyond that discipline. All disciplinary areas hosting DLA students will be involved in developing events, and the Hub will provide funding to enable students to co-develop training events with staff. Students will be required to attend at least one ‘spoke’ training event each year and encouraged to participate in more.
Events will be delivered through a combination of online and face-to-face activities, ensuring that training is accessible and inclusive to students with different needs and in different geographical locations.
The continuing training activities delivered by SGSAH’s 11 Discipline+ Catalysts will be double-badged so that they also appear in the programme of training linked to the Spokes.
The SGSAH Summer School is a well-established flagship for A&H training in Scotland, available to any A&H PhD researcher in member HEIs and delivered through a blend of online and face-to-face training. SGSAH intends to continue the Summer School, incorporating aspects of the current DTP2 Discipline+ Catalysts and Knowledge Exchange Hubs, and adding the Skills Development Training Spokes. Spring into Methods, SGSAH’s collaboration with SGSSS, will also continue to offer innovative methodological training beyond disciplinary boundaries and beyond A&H.
Knowledge Exchange and Impact
Knowledge Exchange (KE) and Impact will form a key strand of the Hub training offer. SGSAH’s three KE Hubs (Citizenship, Culture and Ethics; Creative Economies; Heritage), offer routes into collaboration with external partners from public, private and third sector organisations, including via research internships and the artist residencies programme. This training will act as a springboard for collaboration with key national institutions and stakeholders, including SGSAH’s ten core partners (e.g. BBC Scotland, Creative Scotland, National Museums Scotland, National Trust for Scotland, Scottish Parliament), and with research centres and institutes in HEIs across Scotland.
DLA PhD researchers will attend at least one KE and Impact event per year, benefitting from insights and expertise drawn from A&H stakeholders across Scotland to co-create and translate their research into impact, societal engagement and employability.
Responsive Model
From the point of studentship awards, HEIs will offer the Hub an initial assessment of their students’ training needs aligned to the three Skills Development Training Spokes, KE and Impact activity and Cohort Leadership Programme. The Year 1 induction and Year 2/3 events will then allow a more detailed dialogue between the Hub leadership and the cohorts, enabling students to co-develop the training offer in relation to their needs.
Subject areas hosting DLA students will contribute to Skills Development Training, ensuring a close alignment to DLA student needs, while also extending responses to those needs across the cohort and the wider Scottish HE landscape.
SGSAH will maintain Cohort Development Fund opportunities for student-led training opportunities to be designed and delivered. These opportunities will align with and be promoted through the Skills Development Training Spokes and KE Hubs.