AHRC Studentship for Doctoral Researchers in the Arts and Humanities: Articulating the Value of Community Engagement in the Built Environment

The Open University has available an AHRC funded PhD studentship through the Open-Oxford-Cambridge DTP consortium to start 2023/2024. It is a collaboration award with Future of London.

This project is focussed on exploring the value of community engagement in built environment projects and is a collaboration between the Open University and Future of London - the capital’s independent network for regeneration, housing, infrastructure and economic development practitioners, sharing best practice and build skills, knowledge and networks.

The Open University is internationally recognized for innovative research across the Arts and Humanities. We host a number of major AHRC- and ESRC-funded research projects.  We have a strong commitment to cross-disciplinary work, to national and international public engagement, and to creative partnerships with a range of non-university partners.

Available from October 2023, this fully-funded studentship includes: payment of university fees throughout the funded period; a tax-free maintenance grant for your living costs at the UK Research and Innovation  (UKRI) minimum rate (£17,668 for 2022/23); an additional AHRC stipend of £550 per annum to support costs incurred by working with the partner organisation. Further details about the benefits of an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP award are available on the DTP’s studentships page .

Future of London’s (FoL) 2022 Building Recovery project found that three quarters of built environment practitioners don’t think community engagement is done well enough. Tokenistic and superficial engagement, which is an industry-wide issue, raises suspicion, mistrust, anger and opposition and can lead to costly delays. This project will look to define the mutual value effective community engagement creates, for local people and developers leading these exercises.

How to apply

Closing date: noon 11 January 2023
Equal opportunity is University Policy.