We are one of only 34 higher education organisations to receive HEA awards to develop institutional strategies in specific areas of learning and teaching.

Our project, due to start this autumn, will explore the success factors in delivering training for postgraduate research students across multi-university partnerships.

The project board will be chaired by Professor Jonathan Knight, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research).

The University has Research Council funding for 13 doctoral training centres (DTCs) that involve partnerships with 17 other institutions. As a result we have considerable experience of developing doctoral programmes that benefit from collaboration across universities. The project will focus on the analysis of practice within collaborations with the aim of identifying what works best.

The project will show how to:

enhance the experience for doctoral training students from application to employability; create more efficient procedures and more effective deployment of resources (benefitting both the University and our partners); develop good practice applicable across the sector. Professor Dame Glynis Breakwell, Vice-Chancellor, initiated the project which is supported by our partners in GW4.

She said: “Universities are increasingly being encouraged to pool their resources. This project will look at one specific aspect of our partnering activity, the delivery of postgraduate research education, and ensure that we are doing this successfully from the students’ perspective and also from a business efficiency perspective.

“I am particularly pleased that the University is leading on the development of an excellence strategy for doctoral training as this exemplifies our institutional commitment to supporting early career researchers.”

Stephanie Marshall, Chief Executive of the HEA, said: “This initiative is about recognising the leadership that brings about change; it’s about encouraging the development of excellence strategies; and it’s about sharing best practice for the benefit of students across higher education.”