Partnerships

We develop creative partnerships internally, nationally and globally; partnering with the private, public and academic sectors to advance extraordinary researchers who contribute to society.

Doctoral Training Programmes

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Dedicated Researcher Academy staff manage three strategic University of Nottingham doctoral training programmes (DTPs) in collaboration with external partners. The Researcher Academy’s management of these schemes has created a network of expertise and repositories of best practice with inward and outward flows of knowledge exchange. The Researcher Academy DTPs have been able to advise and support Schools on bid development, while these DTPs have in turn benefited from the insights and skills of partners in the Researcher Academy Placements and Training and Development teams, the university’s Careers Service, and industry partners.

M4C DTP: The AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, in partnership with the AHRC and seven other universities across the Midlands, as well as an exciting range of regional, national and international partners including local galleries and museums such as Nottingham Contemporary and the National Justice Museum and national archives and institutes including Historic England, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Tate galleries.
BBSRC DTP: The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council funded Doctoral Training Partnership, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University and the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC).
ESRC DTP: The Economic and Social Research Council funded Doctoral Training programme, encompassing the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre (ESRC DTC) and the ESRC Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership (MGS DTP), which is a consortium of six universities across the Midlands.
NERC DTP: The Natural Environment Research Council funded Doctoral Training Partnership, a consortium led by Lancaster University, in partnership with the Universities of Nottingham and Bangor.

Researchers on these doctoral training programmes benefit from studentship funding and enhanced support for professional training, expert supervision within and across partner organisations, extensive networking and collaboration opportunities nationally and internationally, and links to partners in other sectors.

Midlands4Cities students have used funding to deliver training, conferences, symposia and workshops for students across arts and humanities research. Themes include: Posthumanism, the changing landscapes of Rome, contemporary collecting practices in galleries and museums and the logic of archives.

Research without boundaries

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The Researcher Academy manages a number of schemes designed to enable researchers to access international opportunities and increase their researcher mobility and profile

Grants and prizes

In the last decade, we’ve awarded more than £640,000 in travel grants and prizes, and more than 1,300 students have visited countries all over the globe to represent the University of Nottingham at world leading conferences in destinations such as the USA, China, Canada and Australia.

A number of awards have led to research collaborations, publications, post-doctoral opportunities and employment post-PhD. The awards are an excellent opportunity to create a link between the University of Nottingham and other leading international universities who conduct similar research areas

One university, three international campuses

Each year, the The Researcher Academy delivers the University of Nottingham Tri-Campus Awards which recognise the accomplishments and contributions of some of our most outstanding postgraduate researchers from all three international campuses. Postgraduate Researchers are nominated by their schools for excellence across a number of areas including publications, conferences, teaching and contributions to the postgraduate community.

The Researcher Academy also works closely with the Graduate Schools on the Malaysia and China campuses to collaborate, network and share best practice in regard to researcher training and development and other issues.

U21 Early Career Researcher Workshop 2020

The 2020 U21 Early Career Researcher (ECR) workshop was hosted by The Researcher Academy and the University of Nottingham Rights Lab.

The 27 Universitas 21 (U21) member institutions from across the globe each nominated up to 10 early career researchers to attend this five-day virtual workshop. Participants had the chance to exchange knowledge and ideas across disciplines and borders. They also developed their research networks through academic match-making sessions, jointly pitched for seed funding for new collaborative research projects and worked towards publishing special journal issues of co-authored articles. As an outcome $12,000 in total was awarded to University of Nottingham research projects.

Placements Partnerships

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The Researcher Academy Placements programme are lead partners in the ERDF Productivity Through Innovation programme (PTI), working with Nottingham Trent University and the University of Derby). This three year, £7.1 million collaborative programme involves local universities, academic staff, postgraduate students, and regional businesses working together to enhance the economic productivity of the local region. We also offer placements in partnership with the EPSRC (NPIF Innovative Placement Funding) and ESRC (NPIF) Accelerating Business Collaboration.

DTP Placements partnerships

The Researcher Academy Placements team provide advice and support to the BBSRC DTP’s PIPS programme whose students have undertaken placements with over 130 organisations, with over 30% of these taking place internationally.

The Researcher Academy's Midlands4Cities team also works closely with partners in the cultural, creative and heritage sectors to develop placement opportunities. As part of the M4C programme students can spend up to 3 months with a host organisation to undertake an employability skills focused placement.

As part of the ESRC MGS DTP programme students can spend up to 3 months with a non-academic organisation either in the UK or overseas to undertake a funded placement with a demonstrable knowledge exchange element. In addition, many ESRC DTP students undertake placements via the UKRI Policy Internship Scheme.

External Collaborations

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The Researcher Academy is part of the East Midlands Doctoral Network (EMDoc), a partnership between the nine universities within the East Midlands region. Together we are united in our missions to share best practice, resources and insights into postgraduate research, as well as providing opportunities for collaboration and networking amongst the organisations’ students.
Three University of Nottingham M4C researchers curated the recent ‘Romantic Facts and Fantasies: Culture and Heritage of the Romantic Age, c. 1780-1840’ exhibition at Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham.
The Mental Health & Wellbeing Postgraduate Workshop was a major one-day event focusing on mental health issues within postgraduate research culture. This initiative was organised by nine students from four M4C universities and led by Ayesha Taylor-Camara at the University of Nottingham.
Our M4C doctoral training programme also recently started offering Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CDAs) which are co-designed between an M4C university and an external partner organisation. CDAs offer a project with established research aims, responding to particular needs in the cultural, creative and heritage sectors. The supervisory teams are pre-established and are made up of academics from a Midlands4Cities university and a member of the external partner organisation.
Each year the ESRC MGS DTP offers a number of Collaborative Studentships involving research or other activities with external public, private or third sector organisations. These projects are developed in collaboration between academics at a Midlands Graduate School DTP institution and an external partner organisation and will often involve a dedicated supervisor from the partner organisation. Joint ESRC DTP Studentships are also available each year where a student is registered and hosted at one Midlands Graduate School institution, but will have a second supervisor at another MGS institution. Both Collaborative and Joint studentship opportunities are advertised as individual projects.