I think I need a PhD just to understand the AHRC website :-s

Anyway I am just wondering - when a uni receives a block grant, is it the uni or the AHRC who decides on which courses the grant is allocated ie do the AHRC say to the uni here is some money do whatever you like with it or do they say here is some money for an MA in X, a PhD in Y etc?

This list of which unis receive BGP...

http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/BGP%20List%20of%20Awards.pdf

... is close to useless because what I need to know is which uni has a studentship (and preferably how many) for a PhD in my subject starting next year. Can I find this info anywhere or do I need to trawl through the website of every uni in the country?
:-(

I'm not 100% certain on this, but from what I understand a uni is given a block grant for 'x' number of PhDs and 'x' number of MAs. What happened with us what that they did the initial selection through the proposals, then there was a big meeting where the funded proposals were chosen - there was only 1 PhD for all of the arts and humanities so they chose the proposal that was the 'best' fit for AHRC out of all those shortlisted. So... the uni decides, but in our uni it isn't a case of a studentship that is advertised, but whether your proposal is the best for what they want to put forward for funding out of all the proposals in your area. I heard that mine was in the last two but was slightly too quantitative in research methods and so the grant was given to the other student - life sucks sometimes ;-)

i hope that helps, not much help I know, but that is how they do it in my institution

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Looking at the Glasgow website it seems that a uni applies to the AHRC for funding in specific subjects, in which case it seems that the AHRC approves or rejects the uni's application for a specific subject.

http://www.gla.ac.uk/faculties/arts/graduateschool/funding/postgraduatestudentships/

Postgraduate Studentship Information

The University of Glasgow will be offering postgraduate studentships in a wide range of subjects in the Arts and Humanities for studies at Masters and Doctoral level commencing in October 2009...

We have submitted a proposal for a significant number of AHRC awards to be made through the new Block Grant Partnership scheme, and the results of this proposal will be announced in February. We have proposed awards at both Masters and Doctoral level in the following sixteen areas within the AHRC subject domain.

* Archaeology
* Celtic Studies
* Classics and Ancient History
* Creative Writing
* Cultural Studies (including Human and Cultural Geography, and subjects in Law, Social Science and Education which fall within the AHRC subject domain)
* Dance, Drama and Performing Arts
* English Language and Literature (including Scottish Literature; some topics in English Language and Linguistics also eligible for ESRC studentships)
* European Language and Culture (including German, Hispanic, Italian, Russian, Polish, Czech)
* Film Studies and Television Studies
* French Language and Culture
* History (some topics in Economic and Social History also eligible for ESRC studentships)
* History of Art, Architecture and Design
* Librarianship, Archives, Record Management and Information Science
* Music
* Philosophy
* Religious Studies

This table is helpful for York but this is the first website I have seen as clear as this...

http://www.york.ac.uk/graduatestudy/finance/ahrc.htm#awards

Hi, yes I knew that there was a good chance I wouldn't get the funding but it's a topic that I'm passionate about so i wasn't prepared to do a PhD which is 3 long and grueling years of your life in something that I hadn't chosen to do myself. I'm a second year so also a year in but AHRC would have been nice, just not to be, and although my supervisor was on the board he too could see that the AHRC would not be as happy with my proposal as the one that is far more their thing. Our uni is very big on arts and humanities pro rata, but we didn't get a large grant this year as we aren't a big uni.

For me it was more about the PhD having to be something that I wanted to do rather than being given a topic if that makes sense. It follows on from my MA and BA and is in a subject area that I'm pretty OCD about ;-) Having said that, if I wasn't doing this I wouldn't be getting the RA experience that I am so its kind of swings and roundabouts. Studentships worry me slightly in A&H as the PhD is so full on, so hard, so draining that if you are doing something that you haven't had come from inside you and your passions for a topic then I'm not sure how you could keep going. Its different in that respect to the sciences but even then you have to want to do that topic more than anything you can imagine. I was told it was not so much how much do you want to do this, but more can you imagine living without having researched this - does that make sense?

With my work although I am a historian I have to do a lot of data analysis and a lot of statistics, they don't like that, that is more ESRC but I'm too qualitative for ESRC - I'm stuck in the middle lol. AHRC are very much what they say on the tin, arts and humanities, they like qualitative research.

I did have a lot of assistance with creating my proposal - I wrote it, but as my supervisor was also my supervisor at BA and MA I had several years of working with him, creating the successive proposals through discussion and we were also given a lot of training at MA in writing a proposal and how to write a good funding application. Basically we would discuss where there were gaps in current knowledge within my field, where there are questions to be asked, how we might approach those questions and the result was the proposal - but it took an awful lot of work - lots of reading so that I knew the subject matter well and the gaps in current knowledge, a lot of discussion over the course of months, lots of rewrites etc. My experience is going to be different though as this has been a progression and a deepening of a topic that started in the second year of the BA! My PhD is different from my MA which was different to my BA but there is a common underlying main source. What I couldn't do of course was to basically tell lies in my proposal, I had to be honest and I knew as I was writing it that although I do a lot of social and cultural work which they like, there is this quantitative element that basically causes problems for the AHRC.

You need to think about what YOU want to do, what really fires you up, what you cannot imagine living without having researched - does the thought of not getting to research it cause you sleepless nights lol - it did me, seriously - the thought of never getting to do this was devastating! (I must get a life ;-) )

Remember also that the AHRC is not the beginning and the end - I don't have it (I did for MA) but I do have a scholarship that pays my fees and pays me a maintenance allowance - less than a third of what the AHRC would pay me, but it helps. I also got work within the dept as an RA which tops things up a bit, and will work teaching next year - again, it all helps so there are ways around things.