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In summer 2023 we launched the second round of the Welsh Culture and Heritage CDP4 Consortium with the National Botanic Garden of Wales and the National Library of Wales.
Our partnership’s 10 sites house a diverse collection of books, manuscripts, sound, film, artworks, natural history specimens, and archaeological artefacts dating back over 2,500 years. They include a 400-acre heritage landscape, museum gallery space, working industrial museums, traditional craftsmanship, historic buildings dating as far back as the iron age, a legal deposit library, over 2000 cubic metres of archives, and a national collections centre.
As a consortium, we have four priority research areas:
1. Everyone is represented: How can we tell new stories, re-interpret collections to tell stories we know through new voices and engage new audiences?
2. Safeguarding biodiversity: How can we support evidence-based responses to the climate emergency and biodiversity crisis and conserve our ecosystems?
3. Digital access to collections: How can digital technology impact accessibility as well as the interpretation of collections and the types of stories told?
4. Conservation: How can the heritage sector manage conservation priorities and choices in new contexts of collection use, widening participation, and changing landscapes?
We seek research projects that address these themes and strongly align with our areas of work and organisational values. Typically, we will expect the supervisory team for each project to consist of 4 supervisors: 2 from a partner organisation and 2 from a university.
Through our partnership, topics of research, EDI action plan, and programme of student cohort events we seek to support a vibrant, diverse, and connected doctoral research training culture in Wales.
We will be awarding 14 PhD studentships across three funding calls in September 2023, 2024 and 2025, for projects commencing in autumn 2024, 2025 and 2026.
If you are an academic based at a Higher Education Institution, expressions of interest are now open for our third round. We will be awarding 5 studentships, starting in October 2026, in this final round. Please submit your expression of interest via our online form by Friday 12 September 2025.
Collaborative Doctoral Training – Expression of Interest form
We will be hosting two briefing events in July 2025 for our third round:
The briefing events are an opportunity for staff at each of our organisations, and university researchers interested in developing PhD projects with us, to learn more about our consortium and its aims as well as begin developing potential collaborations.
To sign up for the briefing event, please use the links above.
