I just wondered what people's experiences are like regarding paying for the day-to-day running costs of your research - does your university provide a budget for this? My study is going to have minimal costs (just local travel expenses for participants) and it's just come to light that I can't access any funding at all. I feel I've been a bit naive in not realising this until now, but it didn't cross my mind because my project has such low costs and I've seen students from other departments handing in claims for thousands of pounds worth of equipment.

It's also just come to light that the uni doesn't pay any conference fees. I definitely haven't been naive in this case, as I was told when I started that conferences were covered as long as we were presenting, and it has surprised the staff as much as the students to find out that this is no longer the case.

I know I'm going to have to do some digging around for external funding, but just wondered if this is generally the case, or if folk here have been able to access these kinds of costs via their universities?

In my lab, we have one budget for everyone. This is a bit silly of course because some projects have much more expenditure than others. There have been many occasions when students are told they can't do something that month because the budget has been spent. We often have to use sub-optimal, time consuming protocols because the new techniques are more expensive.

My university also doesn't pay conference fees, but every student can apply to the alumni fund to get 400 pounds. We make up the rest by applying to scientific societies for their travel funds. I think this is quite normal. Some labs at my uni that have more money will pay for their students to attend conferences though - it's supervisory discretion.