The HRC offers a number of Doctoral Fellowships to arts and humanities PhD students currently in their third full-time year of study (or equivalent part-time) at the University of York.
The criteria for being nominated for a Doctoral Fellowship are intellectual achievement and potential, and the capacity to communicate high-quality research clearly and engagingly to a non-specialist audience.
Finalists for the Doctoral Fellowships will be asked to give a short presentation on their research to staff, students and judges at the HRC Doctoral Fellowships Finals, which takes place annually in May.
HRC Doctoral Competition 2025
This year, the HRC will again be awarding doctoral fellowships to some of our most promising arts and humanities PhD students currently in their third year of full-time study (or at an equivalent stage of part-time study).
Each of the arts and humanities departments/schools (Archaeology, English, History, History of Art, Language and Linguistic Science, Philosophy, School of Arts and Creative Technologies), and the Centre for Medieval Studies may nominate one candidate for an HRC Doctoral Fellowship. The School of Arts and Creative Technologies may nominate two - one from each subject area (TFTI/Music). The candidates will then automatically progress to the HRC Doctoral Competition Finals.
Each candidate will be asked to devise a presentation. There will then be a finals event in May 2025 (exact date tbc), to which all members of the HRC community will be invited to attend. There will be opportunities to discuss the presentations with the candidates, and the fellowships and prizes for the best presentations will be awarded.
The principal criterion on which the judging panel will make its discriminations will be the capacity to communicate high-quality research clearly and engagingly to a non-specialist audience.
Subject to a satisfactory presentation, all finalists will be awarded the title of HRC Doctoral Fellow and a bursary of £500 as a small contribution to supporting their fourth year. As well as this, there are cash prizes for the top three presentations.
2025 Timetable
- Applications to reach departments by Wednesday 12 March.
- Departmental nominations with all supporting documentation to be received by the HRC Administrator (hrc-admin@york.ac.uk) by 12 noon on Wednesday 23 April.
- Doctoral fellowship finalists will be notified by the end of the day on Wednesday 30 April.
- Finals event will take place in May (exact date tbc).