Postgraduate in English

Hello all!

I know that for some science-related PhD's students can be funded by researchers and they get paid something like £11000/year tax-free.

I was just wondering if it was possible to do this with an English-related PhD? If it is, could you maybe post some links to places that do? I've tried googling it and nothing has really come up, other than that I'm not sure how to go about finding out about these things!

Cheers for your help :smile:

Reply 1

cjc3676

Research funding for Humanities subjects is rare and highly competitive.

The usual route is to take a specialist taught Masters course first, and this can be competitive as well. You will need '2.1 or above' (or prediction) to be considered and strong academic references are *very* important.

One of the best places to look is jobs.ac.uk - scroll down to 'Studentships' at the bottom of the initial page. Most funded Masters places come up around March onwards, but PhD places are advertised throughout the year. Keep checking back in your final term and apply for anything that seems likely. Tell your tutors you are doing this - they will be able to offer advice and may hear about other schemes/places etc.

Reply 2

sunlightdaze

Okay, thank you so much, I thought that might be the case (that funding is rare and competitive). I had a wee look at the Studentships and (unsurprisingly) there were none relating to Literature!

Reply 3

cjc3676

If you look at the Queen Mary site, they offered studentships on their MA English program last year. Check back to places like this around March as that's when most research council or Uni-based funding gets advertised.

Reply 4

evantej

Original post by Kirsten92

[...] I was just wondering if it was possible to do this with an English-related PhD? If it is, could you maybe post some links to places that do? I've tried googling it and nothing has really come up, other than that I'm not sure how to go about finding out about these things! [...]

There are three sources of funding for humanities subjects: research councils; the university themselves; and externally.

In English we have the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which allocates scholarships that pay tuition fees and provide a stipend for masters students and doctoral students (i.e. you will not have to pay anything). Universities receive x amount of AHRC funding based on their research performance. This means that only some universities receive AHRC funding, and generally the funding is skewed towards doctoral research rather than masters (e.g. there are fewer awards and you receive less living costs at masters level). If you read an earlier comment I wrote then you will find out more. But in general most universities that receive AHRC funding at masters level will be lucky to have one award per year in English. Receiving AHRC funding at masters level is horribly competitive; most people bite the bullet and self fund the masters in the hope of securing doctoral funding. For lots of people this obviously does not work out, and may further disadvantage them in terms of employment if they studied full time.

jobs.ac.uk usually only lists AHRC funded projects which lecturers have secured individual funding for (i.e. on a very specific topic linked to their research interests). These can be listed any time of the year. The scheme above is run every year and has specific deadlines. Your research proposal can be on anything.

Some universities will have their own funding. This will typically involve discounts on tuition fees, tuition fee scholarships/waivers, and in fewer cases proper scholarships themselves. The latter might have a whole load of eligibility criteria attached to them too depending upon where the money came from so beware.

The last source is external funding. This might conceivably come from anywhere (e.g. businesses, charities etc., etc.). But it will take you an awful long time to find anything relevant and actually get money out of them.

The reality is there is very little desire to fund research in the humanities at the moment. Even very good universities do not have AHRC funding at masters level; judging by this page, Edinburgh only receives doctoral funding in English. In addition, you cannot do a PhD without a masters. This means there is a financial huddle to cross.

You need to decide whether it is worth crossing in the first place, because there is no guarantee having a PhD will mean you will get a lectureship. If so then you need to consider the possibility of self-funding. This will depend entirely on your personal circumstances so I will not bother writing an essay to cover any potential points.

I hope this has helped.

Postgraduate in English

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