£19m awarded to White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities

Posted on 18 October 2013

Archaeology's Julian Richards named as founding director

We are delighted to announce that the University of York, in collaboration with the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, has been awarded £19m to create the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. This bid to the AHRC's Doctoral Training Partnership competition (previously known as ‘BGP2’) will fund an indicative 270 PhD studentships over five years for cohorts beginning from autumn 2014.

The award will be supplemented by a further contribution of £4 million from the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, providing a further 39 fully-funded PhD studentships, 30 fully-funded Masters studentships and 96 Masters fee waivers.

This outstanding result is testimony to the strength of the Arts & Humanities across the three Universities and recognises the exceptionally strong contribution that they make to our institutional reputations and rankings.

We are especially proud that York has led the bid, and will now provide the headquarters for the College within the superb facilities of the Humanities Research Centre. The department's own Professor Julian Richards has been appointed the founding Director of the College.

Much of the success of the bid comes from our existing record of strong collaboration in the White Rose University Consortium. The College will act both as a training centre for doctoral students and as a catalyst for further cross-institutional research collaborations with colleagues at Leeds and Sheffield.

The funding is designed to foster a more collaborative approach to doctoral training and will equip high-achieving individuals with the skills and experience to become leaders in their chosen fields, ultimately benefitting the UK economy and society. To achieve this, the College will work closely with leading external organisations from sectors including museums, galleries, archives and libraries; arts and heritage organisations; creative industries; design, manufacturing and retail; publishing and performing arts; media; and charities and the public sector.