The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has announced that The University of Warwick along with six other higher education institutions (HEIs) in the Midlands, will receive Doctoral Landscape Awards.

These prestigious funding awards, which reflect the HEIs’ successes in Arts and Humanities research and research supervision, are for scholarships for arts and humanities doctoral study.

The Universities of Warwick, Leicester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Birmingham City University, DeMontfort University and Coventry University, have all secured Doctoral Landscape Awards, enabling these leading Midlands institutions to continue to build on the thriving relationship and collaborative community of doctoral students producing world-class arts and humanities research.

Professor Rachel Moseley, Vice Provost and Chair of Faculty of Arts, said: "The University of Warwick is delighted to receive AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards, which will help us to keep attracting the best home and international students across the arts and humanities. We look forward to future announcements about Doctoral Focal Awards, and will continue to support AHRC-remit disciplines, not least by building new collaborations with external partners."

Only 50 universities across the UK have received the funding which has been allocated through a formula-based approach. Each institutional award will support 15 full-time PhD students, with studentships starting in October 2026 – three per year, over a five-year period – and will contribute towards the AHRC’s three-fold strategy for post-graduate research funding, alongside Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships and Doctoral Focal Awards.

All institutions receiving Doctoral Landscape Awards will be part of an AHRC-supported regional Hub.

Professor David Lambert, the Director of the Centre for Arts Doctoral Research Excellence, will be leading the new Midlands Hub at Warwick. He said, "I am really pleased that Warwick will remain at the heart of the relationships we have built as part of Midlands4Cities, as we continue to collaborate in supporting our PhD students, share best practice and work with external partners in the region and beyond."

AHRC Executive Chair Professor Christopher Smith, said: “The AHRC Doctoral Landscape Awards provide flexible funding to allow universities to build on existing excellence in research and opportunities for innovation across the arts and humanities. They will support the development of talented people and, alongside our other doctoral schemes, contribute to a vibrant, diverse and internationally-attractive research and innovation system.”

Find out more about The University of Warwick’s Centre for Arts Doctoral Research Excellent here: Faculty of Arts DTC (CADRE)

ENDS

For further information contact:
Helen Annetts
Media & Communications Officer (Press Office)
Helen.Annetts@Warwick.ac.uk / 07779 026720

University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is one of the UK’s leading universities, marking its 60th anniversary in 2025. With over twenty-eight thousand students from 147 countries, it's currently ranked 9th in the UK by The Guardian University Guide. It has an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, for innovation, and for links with business and industry. The recent Research Excellence Framework classed 92% of its research as ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. The University of Warwick was awarded Midlands University of the Year by The Times and Sunday Times.

Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds world-class, independent research in subjects from philosophy and the creative industries, to art conservation and product design.

AHRC research addresses some of society’s biggest challenges, such as tackling modern slavery, exploring the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, and understanding what it is to be human. See the full range of AHRC research here: remit, programmes and priorities page.

Film and Television Studies at the University of Warwick are delighted to be partnering with the Pod on a new collaborative research project: ‘Using Film to Affect Change: Mental Health, Social Advocacy and the Moving Image’.

New for September on the Material Musings blog, Jurriaan Gouw discusses changes to Greek warfare in the 5th-4th centuries BC and the development of the Macedonian phalanx, in an article entitled 'Less is More: The Transition from Hoplite to Phalangite'.

You can read it here.

He will continue to serve as a member of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board.

Congratulations to Professor Roberta Bivins and Professor Mathew Thomson who have had their article about NHS anniversaries published in Modern British History.

This was drawn from reflections from The Cultural History of the NHS research project.

Read the full article here.

Abstract

Delivered a day after Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) reached its 75th year since its opening on the Appointed Day of 5 July 1948, the Pimlott Lecture for 2023 explored the culture of NHS anniversary-making. What can the marking of these anniversaries tell us about changing attitudes towards the service, and indeed, the British state? Here, examining evidence from the media, government archives, and Mass Observation, we argue that NHS anniversaries have long functioned as points of reflection but that their role as moments of national celebration and even communion has come to the fore only recently and culminated in the apparent ‘anniversary fever’ of 2018. We will explore the reasons behind the growing public fervour, what it can tell us, and the lessons offered by our work on this (still) best-loved of British institutions for historians working on highly politicized objects in ‘fevered’ times.

Autumn School for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers

Venice, 30 September – 4 October 2024

Wild Warwick - Ian Farnell's exhibition in collaboration with the university's Sustainability team has been covered online by BBC Coventry & Warwickshire.

The University of Warwick’s School of Modern Languages & Cultures invites applications from highly qualified prospective doctoral students for its PhD programmes in French, German, Italian, and Hispanic Studies, and Translation & Translation Cultural Studies (TTS).

For further information, see the School’s webpages on postgraduate study.

Doctoral funding is available through university-wide schemes (Chancellor’s International Scholarships, China Scholarship Council/University of Warwick scholarships), the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, and joint PhD programmes (e.g. the Monash-Warwick Alliance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University-Warwick Joint PhD programme).

Given the early deadlines (in late November; December; or January, depending on the scheme), and the multi-stage selection process, we encourage applicants to get in touch with their preliminary enquiries by sending an academic CV and draft research proposal to the School Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Ingrid De Smet (I.de-Smet@warwick.ac.uk), by 28 October 2024,

and/or to the relevant subject-specific postgraduate research admissions advisors:

• French & francophone: Prof. Ingrid De Smet (i.de-smet@warwick.ac.uk)
• German: Dr Nicholas Jones (Nicholas.d.jones@warwick.ac.uk)
• Italian: Prof. Fabio Camilletti (F.Camilletti@warwick.ac.uk)
• Hispanic Studies: Assoc. Prof. Tom Whittaker (t.whittaker@warwick.ac.uk)
• Translation & Transcultural Studies: Assoc. Prof. Caroline Summers (Caroline.Summers@warwick.ac.uk)

Enquiries from suitably qualified self-funded or externally funded (sponsored) students are also welcome.

Online PhD admissions interviews will likely be held in the weeks commencing 9^th and 16^th December 2024.

Professor Stephanie Panichelli-Batalla, a GSD professor and the University’s Academic Director for Sustainability, was awarded the Principal Fellowship of Advance HE. The fellowship is awarded to highly experienced Higher Education teaching professionals whose practice involves a sustained record of effectiveness in strategic leadership of high-quality learning.

Read more.

Our Liberal Arts and Design Studies departments recently collaborated with Warwick’s Nintendo Society to deliver a unique, immersive, and interactive learning experience for students enrolled on our ‘The Quest I: Departures and Heroic Journeys’ module, led by Dr. Bryan Brazeau.

Read more.

Lead authors: Pietari Kääpä (Warwick) and Hunter Vaughan (Emerson College/Cambridge)

Co-authors: Norma Cuadros (Warwick), Kate Moffat (Warwick) and Vanessa Zarm (UCL)

The Greening European Film Policy report is available for download from the Global Green Media Network website: https://www.globalgreenmedianetwork.org/reports

This report examines European film, television, and streaming industry sustainability policies, management, financing, and production at local, state, and EU levels. It explores policy support for institutionalizing these practices and offers solutions to fill policy gaps.

Produced in collaboration with Green Eyes (Hungary), Ecomuvi (Italy), Film London (UK), Screen Greening (Ireland), and Neptune Environmental (UK), the report aims to make green film production an active agent for positive transformation in the industry. Addressing funding, production, and reportage phases, the report provides three key recommendations.

1. Minimum Standards:

Establish standardised sustainability expectations and norms, from development-stage planning to on-set baselines, for both publicly-financed and commercial productions.

2. Finance

Adopt mandatory financial investment schemes for all productions, including incoming mobile productions and international co-productions, to link financial incentives with verifiable reductions in environmental impact.

3. Auditing

Introduce third-party auditing and certification focused on exceeding minimum standards, directly tied to financial incentivisation.

Please contact Pietari Kaapa (P.Kaapa@warwick.ac.uk) or Hunter Vaughan (hunter.vaughan@emerson.edu) with any questions.

During a year of research leave, Prof. Beat Kümin has investigated the phenomenon of depositing chronicles and objects into tower spheres on top of prominent buildings like churches, town halls and fortifications.

During a year of research leave, Prof. Beat Kümin has investigated the phenomenon of depositing chronicles and objects into tower spheres on top of prominent buildings like churches, town halls and fortifications. Documented from the Middle Ages to the present, seemingly only in and around territories of the erstwhile Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the custom provides fascinating insights into how local societies saw themselves and what they wished to pass on to successive generations. The project, supported by the German Gerda Henkel Foundation, has so far identified over 1600 sites and thousands of separate deposits (at one Zurich church, there were no fewer than 20 between 1505 and 1996). The funder has just released a video series of six episodes (accessible in both English and German) documenting field work in Switzerland in autumn 2003.

[English Trailer] [Episodes] [Project Homepage]

Dr Jack Bowman's 'The Early Political Thought and Publishing Career of V. K. Krishna Menon, 1928-1938' has recently been selected as one of two articles to be 'Highly Commended' in the Historical Journal's inaugural Early Careers Researcher Article Prize. Their article follows Indian Independence activist V. K. Krishna Menon, later India's defence minister and United Nations delegate, through his formative years in Britain as an editor. A book history of anti-colonial print, the article ties together histories of political thought, interwar internationalism, and global anti-colonial networks, to argue that twentieth-century anti-colonialism can be fruitfully engaged via the lens of book history. Their article is available open access and can be read hereLink opens in a new window