ESRC Doctoral Focal Award Plus: Innovating in Data-Driven Research

Award to to deliver a doctoral focal award in environmental evidence synthesis.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is providing funding for a doctoral focal award plus to develop a leading cohort of social scientists across career stages. The cohort should be capable of using data-driven research approaches in creative and insightful ways to understand the world and address complex societal and economic challenges. The opportunity will deliver both doctoral training and targeted training and capacity-building activities (TCB).

Doctoral focal awards provide support for areas that require a concentration of studentships in combination with a highly tailored training programme. In addition to supporting doctoral training, a doctoral focal award plus typically provides training and capacity building opportunities for researchers at other career stages.

Innovation in data-driven research will be the core focus of this doctoral focal award plus. The doctoral focal award plus will need to be interdisciplinary in order to fulfil its objectives.

The award recipient will deliver a training and capacity building offer through a programme of doctoral training and a suite of training and capacity building activities supporting mid-career and senior researchers. This is an opportunity to explore and pilot more flexible and inclusive approaches to doctoral training that better support the upskilling of the existing workforce and widen the UK talent pipeline. ESRC encourages applications proposing alternative doctoral pathways and doctoral qualifications, including professional doctorates. Approaches should reflect employer needs in other sectors and applicants should consider how their co-funding model could support the delivery of this requirement.

The opportunity is designed to deliver the following outcomes:

• A cadre of doctoral researchers with the knowledge and skills needed to use innovative approaches in data-driven research to transform understanding of the world and inform policy and practice.
• Piloting new approaches to postgraduate training (ie level 7 and 8) and opening it up to a wider audience who may not want to undertake a traditional PhD, therefore diversifying the doctorate and addressing employer needs in sectors outside of academia.
• An additional tailored training programme that uses innovative pedagogical approaches alongside cutting edge methods to effectively upskill social scientists across career stages and relevant to a range of careers.
• A portfolio of research that uses novel data-driven approaches, including applying methods and data in innovative ways, to deliver new insights.
• Sharing of good pedagogical and methodological practice.

Funding for a cohort of up to eight studentships will be provided per year for three years with students expected to start in October 2027.

The minimum number of studentships the doctoral focal award plus will be expected to support will be identified in the funding opportunity. As this area is of considerable interest to business, public and VCSE sectors, at least two students per cohort must be supported by a non-academic partner or partners.