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‌HRC Doctoral Fellowships

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 take place annually in June.

HRC Doctoral Fellowships competition 2023

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 eligible department/centre may nominate one candidate for an HRC Doctoral Fellowship. The nine candidates will then automatically progress to the HRC Doctoral Fellowship Finals. 

Each candidate will be asked to devise a presentation. There will then be a finals event on Tuesday 13 June 2023, to which all members of the HRC community will be invited to watch the finalists give their presentation.

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. 
 
There are cash prizes for the top three presentations in addition to the £500 stipend each Fellow will receive. 

Timetable:

  • Applications to reach departments by Tuesday 25 April 2023.
  • Departmental nominations with all supporting documentation to be received by the HRC Administrator (hrc-admin@york.ac.uk) by 12 noon on Tuesday 16 May 2023.
  • Doctoral fellowship finalists will be notified by the end of the day on Tuesday 23 May 2023.
  • Finals event will take place on Tuesday 13 June 2023.

Full details of the application process

Trying to condense my own doctoral work into a ten-minute presentation for a non-specialist audience was quite a challenge. However, the process of paring down my ideas and questioning the jargon that I take for granted was an incredibly helpful exercise, allowing me to bring the core elements of my PhD into sharper focus.

Patrick, HRC Doctoral Fellow 2016