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University Alliance’s Doctoral Training Alliance (DTA) delivers structured PhD training opportunities to attract and nurture research talent across Alliance universities and partner institutions. Annual Summer Schools are at the centre of DTA’s three programmes dedicated to Applied Biosciences for Health, Energy and Social Policy. For the first time, the 2021 Summer School brought together around 100 PhD researchers and supervisors from across th…

(Originally printed in Times Higher Education on 22nd August 2021) An initiative by the University Alliance to offer training and support to BAME scholars is an important step in the right direction, says Professor Vini Lander The recent appearance on the BBC’s Newsnight programme of Stanley Johnson, the prime minister’s father, as an “environmentalist” caused quite a stir. After all, the UK’s universities are full of academics admirably well qua…

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2021, the DTA brought together four women in leadership roles within the programme, who are at different stages of their career. Following the theme for #IWD this year, Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world , the ‘in conversation with’ chat was facilitated by Dr Cheryl Allsop (Deputy Director of DTA Social Policy and Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Univ…

This blog first appeared on the Higher Education Policy Institute on Wednesday 3 March. With the latest news that every adult in England will be offered a vaccine by the end of July, it is worth reflecting on the immense local and national collective endeavour required to realise this target and, on Budget day, we should learn from it for the role of research, innovation and universities in the UK’s post-COVID recovery. Throughout the pandemic, u…

By Social Policy Reps Katheryn Margaret Pascoe & April Murray Cantwell During the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic, elections were held to establish the very first representative committee for DTA and DTA3 researchers. After nominations and preparing short video statements outlining why we wished to take on the role, online voting went live. April and I were elected by fellow PhD researchers to represent our social policy cohort. Made up of seven r…

2020 – A third extraordinary year for DTA3 Written by Heather Bennett, Deputy Head of Doctoral Training programmes It might be a cliché to define 2020 as an extraordinary year, but for the DTA3 programme, 2020 has been the third extraordinary year in a row. In early 2018 University Alliance was awarded funding through the ambitious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund doctoral programme, which offers PhD researchers high-quality and innovative training …