Scottish AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards (DLA) – Training Hub
Seven universities across Scotland are offering AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award (DLA) PhD studentships in the Arts & Humanities, for start dates in October 2027. The universities offering awards are the Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, Stirling and Strathclyde. Any queries regarding applications should be directed to the relevant university.
SGSAH is the home of the AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award Hub, which offers collective interdisciplinary doctoral training and development activities to the funded cohort of DLA PhD studentship holders. SGSAH offers distinctly interdisciplinary training that encourages doctoral researchers to challenge convention and experiment across fields, in partnership with broader communities of Arts & Humanities doctoral researchers across all 17 of SGSAH’s member institutions. More details of the projected training are detailed below, in order to assist applicants in developing their training and development plans.
About the Doctoral Landscape Award Hub
Purpose
The DLA Hub for Scotland, delivered through the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH), provides interdisciplinary, inclusive and responsive doctoral training and development platform for Arts & 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 supports cohorts of world-class doctoral researchers to contribute meaningfully across academic, creative, public, and professional spheres:
- Embedding equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to ensure accessibility and equity of opportunity.
- Responding actively to the climate emergency through its Green Graduate framework.
- Providing cohort-responsive training that complements institutional provision and promotes academic excellence.
- Offering interdisciplinary, methodological and creative development through three skills development Labs: Concepts & Critiques, Empirical Enquiry, and Practice Research.
- Strengthening knowledge exchange (KE) by sustaining and developing internships and collaborative partnerships, including engagement with the existing KE Networks (Heritage, Creative Economies, and Citizenship).
- 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, along with SGSAH's wider activities, provides DLA researchers the opportunity to experience the very best of Arts & Humanities across Scotland, tailored to their research and wider aspirations. The DLA Hub training offer comprises 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:
- The Cohort Leadership Programme: the opportunity to come together as a cohort group to foster collaboration, benefit from sector-leading Arts & Humanities training from academics across Hub HEIs and build academic communities.
- Academic Expertise: DLA researchers attend training delivered on an interdisciplinary methodological basis organised through the following three Labs: Concepts & Critiques, Empirical Enquiry, and Practice Research. For academic year 2026-27, these opportunities will happen alongside training delivered by SGSAH’s existing Discipline+ Catalysts and will be concentrated in late-November, early-March, and at SGSAH’s summer school in June 2027.
- Knowledge Exchange: this pillar develops the skills to work with non-academic stakeholders and is delivered through SGSAH’s three Knowledge Exchange (KE) Networks, which are: Citizenship, Creative Economies and Heritage. The KE Networks build connections between doctoral researchers in the Arts & Humanities, society and the economy. They deliver industry-focused training events in collaboration with our industry partners across the creative arts, heritage and third sectors.
You can find more details in the SGSAH DLA Hub Guide for Academic Year 2026-27 under Key Policies & Guides here: https://www.sgsah.ac.uk/current/.
Please note travel and accommodation expenses (where required) to attend SGSAH DLA Hub training activity will be covered by SGSAH/Hub funding, following the guidance at https://www.sgsah.ac.uk/current/travelguidance/. DLA funded PhD researchers are not expected to cover attendance from Hub activities from their individual research funding or RTSG.
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 methods and skills. This offer will complement the disciplinary expertise and individual training plans developed and delivered within home HEIs. It will be structured into three Labs, each led by a Training Associate Director, enabling the Hub to respond to cohort needs while maintaining consistency and promoting awareness of the full scale and scope of A&H research. These interdisciplinary Labs are:
- Concepts & 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 an interdisciplinary manner.
- Empirical Enquiry: training to develop the skills necessary for diverse forms of data gathering for Arts & Humanities research, whether through archival enquiry, working with images and objects, through surveys or interviews, or quantification, within ethical frameworks.
- Practice Research: training exploring all Arts & Humanities forms of practice research - including practice-based and practice-led research as a form of research in its own right, its attendance methods and outputs.
Training events may cross-pollinate across more than one Lab and/or discipline; where events are grounded in a particular discipline, they will be designed to benefit students from beyond that discipline. It is the expectation that advanced discipline specific training is delivered by the home HEI. 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 are required to attend at least one Lab training event each year and encouraged to participate in more when appropriate to their study.
Events will be delivered through a combination of online and in-person activities, ensuring that training is accessible and inclusive to students with different needs and in different geographical locations.
The SGSAH Summer School is a well-established flagship for Arts & Humanities training in Scotland, available to any Arts & Humanities PhD researcher in member HEIs and delivered through a blend of online and in-person 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 Labs. Spring into Methods, SGSAH’s collaboration with the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, will continue to offer innovative methodological training beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Knowledge Exchange and Impact
Knowledge Exchange (KE) and Impact will form a key strand of the Hub training offer. SGSAH’s three KE Networks (Citizenship; 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 are required to attend at least one KE and Impact event per year, benefitting from insights and expertise drawn from Arts & Humanities 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 Labs, 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's Student-led Interdisciplinary Training Fund is open to all A&H doctoral researchers, including DLA students. This fund offers opportunities for student-led training activities to be designed and delivered across Scotland. These opportunities will align with and be promoted through the Skills Development Labs and KE Networks.