2026 AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Studentships

List of Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD Studentships available for October 2026 start

Studentships starting from October 2026 will be advertised from March 2026 onwards. Studentship adverts will go live from March – May 2026.

The following list will be updated periodically and links to advertised studentships will be added as they go live and updated when they close.

Studentships are listed according to CDP award holder organisation or consortium

Studentships in blue are currently live and clicking the project title will take you to the advert page

Please also check the individual Partner organisation/University websites for advertised studentships.

We will also advertise opportunities on our LinkedIn page.

Applicant Webinar

On Monday 13 April 2026 we hosted a webinar for potential applicants exploring the CDP Scheme and how the funding and application process works.

If you would like to catch up with the applicant webinar you can do so on the following link – https://youtu.be/ALgblgLBPLc

British Library

• The Dispersal of Manuscripts from the Cotton Library – Birmingham (Deadline – Sunday 10 May)

• Cold War Socialism, Non-Alignment and Anti-Colonialism in the Yugoslav Press, 1961-1979 – Exeter (Deadline – Tuesday 5 May)

• Children’s reading and cultural engagement across libraries and community spaces in Leeds – Glasgow (Deadline – Friday 24 April)

• Rediscovering a Woman Collector at the British Library: New Sources and Perspectives on Sarah Sophia Banks – UCL (Deadline – Tuesday 14 April)

British Museum

• Conservation in Practice: The role of the conservator at The British Museum, 1960-1990 – Brighton (Deadline – Tuesday 26 May)

• Hoarding through time: Defining the practice of hoarding and assessing the impact of evolving legislation on its recording and interpretation – Leicester (Deadline – Sunday 17 May)

• Reconnecting Museum collections with ecological knowledge in East Africa, 1870-1930 – Lincoln (Deadline – Wednesday 13 May)

CC-EE – East of England Consortium (University of Cambridge Museums, Colchester and Ipswich Museums, Peterborough Museums, Norfolk Museum Service)

• Recording nature and writing the self: time, entomology and the archive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – Cambridge (Deadline – Sunday 3 May)

• Spitting Image: political satire in Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries – Exeter (Deadline – Monday 18 May)

• Heritage in Transition: Christchurch Mansion and the Making of Ipswich’s Civic Identity – Anglia Ruskin (Deadline – Monday 4 May)

• Objects of Care: The Role of Museum Collections in Supporting Young Adults’ Mental Health – Leicester (Deadline – Sunday 10 May)

• For the Public Good: Exploring the power of community engagement, co-production and innovative creative practice at the Museum of Norwich – Norwich University of the Arts (Deadline – Friday 1 May)

English Heritage & Historic England

• Corbridge Roman Town: Economy and Society on the Edges of Roman Britain – Durham (Deadline – Monday 1 June)

• Fragmented Pasts: Medieval Monastic Window Fragments in Archaeological Archives – York (Deadline – Friday 29 May)

• Spaces of Health: Connecting Past and Present Experiences of Health and Wellbeing in Heritage – Leeds (Deadline – Friday 1 May)

Imperial War Museums

• From the Frontline: Witnesses to War – Exploring the role, perspectives and impact of war correspondents during the Cold War and late 20th century – Bristol (Deadline – Friday 1 May)

• Playing at War: Challenges and Opportunities in Gamifying IWM’s collection – Glasgow (Deadline – Friday 22 May)

• Recovering the Relics of War: Exploring ways in which the material culture recovered from sites of conflict can be used in affective storytelling – Leicester (Deadline – Sunday 10 May)

• A Sisterhood of Sorts: Female Paramilitarism during The Troubles – Strathclyde (Deadline – Friday 22 May)

Museum of the Home

• Intimate Energies: How do museum collections help us see the power of unrecognised actors in the history and future of energy demand? – Leeds (Deadline – Friday 1 May)

• At Home and Out of the Closet: The Homemaking Strategies of Queer East and Southeast Asian Communities in Contemporary Britain – Nottingham

• Inner Wear: Domestic Dress and Clothing Practices in the English Home (1870-2019) – Queen Mary (Deadline – Monday 22 June)

The National Archives

• Surfacing and sharing visual design records through AI-driven datasets – Brighton (Deadline – Sunday 31 May)

• Laser Cleaning for the Surface Treatment and Analysis of Parchment – Imperial (Deadline – Monday 1 June)

• The Making of the National Archive – the first century of the Public Record Office – Leeds (Deadline – Friday 8 May)

• Rethinking Reparations: A Cultural and Social History of Post-First World War Compensation to Civilians, 1918-1925 – Swansea (Deadline – Friday 22 May)

The National Gallery & Bowes Museum

• The Burlington Magazine and the British Art World: Art, Writing, Publishing, and People in the Twentieth Century – St Andrews (Deadline – Wednesday 29 April)

• Histories of Pollution in the Urban Art Museum, c. 1840–1900 – UCL (Deadline – Monday 4 May)

• Take One Picture (1995-present): children’s art, creativity and learning, and the future of museum education – Westminster (Deadline – Thursday 30 April)

National Museums Northern Ireland

• The Ulster Museum: Northern Ireland’s Culture Lab – Leicester (Deadline – Monday 20 April)

• Reawakening the Living Landscape: Integrating Heritage and Sustainability at the Ulster Folk Museum – Newcastle (Deadline – Monday 20 April)

• Rewind, Play and Fast Forward: Tracing the evolution of Irish-English from sound archive to web – Queen’s, Belfast (Deadline – Monday 20 April)

Portsmouth City Council

• Critical Heritage Stories, Communities, and Technologies: Eastney Engine Houses and the Past, Present, and Future of Industrial Heritage Museums – Southampton (Deadline – Monday 1 June)

• The Visual and Material Mythologies of Sherlock Holmes, 1887-present day – Chichester (Deadline – Monday 17 August)

• Portsmouth 1980s underground nightclubs as sites for long term identity formation – Southampton (Deadline – Wednesday 10 June)

REACH (BFI, Historic Royal Palaces, National Portrait Gallery, National Trust, Royal Museums Greenwich)

• Interrogating British South Asian Culture in Non-Fiction Films and Television, 1960s-1980s – Warwick (Deadline – Tuesday 5 May)

• Equitable Heritage: developing new approaches to creatively embedded access in heritage settings – Leicester (Deadline – Friday 22 May)

• Inclusive Digital Tours: Understanding Quality of Experience for Disabled and Neurodivergent Heritage Visitors – Surrey (Deadline – Sunday 14 June)

• Uncharted Voices: Subaltern Seafarer Identity, Agency and Culture in Global Seafaring, 1890–1945 – Portsmouth (Deadline – Sunday 10 May)

Science Museum and Archive Consortium (BT Archives, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Royal Geographic Society, Royal Society, Science Museum Group)

• Moving the Frame: New Computational Practices for the Description and Organisation of the BT Film Collection – UCL (Deadline – Friday 24 April)

• Just acquisitions? Law and ethics in Kew’s overseas plant collecting – Royal Holloway (Deadline – Friday 8 May)

• Urgent rescue curation of space heritage in a time of world crisis – UCL (Deadline – Friday 24th April)

Tate

• Sustainability, conservation, and collection care: exploring the occurrence and implications of VOCs emitted from modern and contemporary art in storage – UCL (Deadline – Thursday 7 May)

• Investigating the Impacts of Socially Engaged Art on Cultural Organisations and Contemporary Art Practice – UWE (Deadline – Sunday 10 May)

• Exporting Turner, c.1910–1966 – York (Deadline – Wednesday 27 May)

V&A

• Paduan Renaissance Bronzes at the V&A: Exploring New Critical Approaches – Courtauld (Deadline – Friday 24 April)

• Warps and Wefts: Textiles, Design and Scotland in Historical and Contemporary Contexts – Glasgow (Deadline – Friday 12 June)

• Invisible Hands: Migrant Labour and British Craft in the Long Eighteenth Century – UCL (Deadline – Wednesday 15 April)

Welsh Cultural Heritage Consortium (Amgueddfa Cymru, National Botanic Garden of Wales, National Library of Wales)

• Restorative soundscapes in botanical gardens: exploring the role of sound in conservation and community well-being – UCL (Deadline – Thursday 30 April)

• The Anti-Apartheid Movement in Wales, 1945-1994 – Swansea (Deadline – Friday 22 May)

• Future Archives: representing intentional communities in Wales as blueprints for cooperative, equitable, and resilient cultures – Cardiff Metropolitan (Deadline – Monday 1 June)

• Preserving and developing the nation’s memory about Y Wladfa – Swansea (Deadline – Friday 22 May)

• Echoes of Empire: Decolonising Natural Sciences at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales – Swansea (Deadline – Friday 22 May)