SENSS-CAM Studentship Competition

What are the criteria for this competition?

Research proposals must fall within the ESRC remit and be aligned with the Thematic Areas/Steers for SENSS and CAM-DTP.  

• Each supervisory team may submit only one application for this cross-DTP competition. However, this does not impact on their eligibility to submit separate project proposals to either the SENSS only or CAM-DTP only studentship competitions. Supervisory teams must consist of at least two members, one from each DTP. Any additional supervisors should ideally be from a different university/institute, different department, or, at a minimum, a clearly distinct unit or centre within the same department. 

• If a project has an external collaborative partner, that partner is expected to provide an additional supervisor for the project. 

Eligibility criteria

The SENSS member of the studentship supervisory team must be a research-active member of staff; i.e. either (a) submitted by their institution to REF 2021; or (b) whose research comes under a SENSS Theme for which their home institution submitted a qualifying unit of assessment in the SENSS DTP bid. Early career researchers would qualify under (b).  

• The CAM-DTP member of the studentship supervisory team must be a research-active member of staff at a CAM-DTP consortium university, and eligible to be appointed as a doctoral supervisor. At least one member of the supervisory team must have supervised a PhD to completion.  

• All supervisors must have undertaken supervisory development training, as required by their university, in the last three years (to be satisfied by the date of registration of the student concerned, or within three months of that date); and to have an excellent record of formal progress reporting in the previous 12 months for all their PGR students. 

• The studentship award must be for a minimum of 3.5 years but may also be awarded to a candidate without a Masters degree, for a maximum of 4.5 years. The actual length of the award is dependent on whether the successful applicant has appropriate skills for the project, as well as general social science research methods training as set out in the ESRC Postgraduate Training Guidelines. Supervisors are asked to identify an appropriate Masters programme offered by SENSS or CAM universities, in the event that a successful applicant has a training profile that requires additional Masters-level training (4.5 year studentship). There is no requirement for studentships at both DTPs to be of the same length. 

• The Research Councils’ academic and residential eligibility requirements will apply for this scheme. The SENSS and CAM websites also hold this information, as well as answering some frequently asked questions about eligibility. 

Supervisory team 

Supervisory teams must comprise a primary (principal) and a second supervisor, one from each DTP. The studentship will be registered at the institution which employs the primary supervisor. A third supervisor can be included and is required if the studentship is a collaborative one. That is, where a non-Higher Education Institution is a partner in the research project, that non-HEI must provide a (third) supervisor. 

Primary supervisor eligibility 

The primary supervisor must: 

• Be employed by, and usually based at a SENSS or CAM-DTP partner institution; 

• Would normally be eligible to be a PhD primary supervisor according to their university’s criteria for UKRI/ESRC-funded studentships; 

• Have undertaken approved professional development training in relation to their supervisory role within the last 3 years; 

• Have a 100% record of formal progress reporting for at least the previous 12 months for all of their PGR students;  

• In addition, where an inexperienced primary supervisor is proposed (e.g. a new investigator), a more experienced supervisor must be nominated to the supervisory team as the second supervisor. An experienced supervisor is defined for these purposes as having successfully supervised at least two students to completion as the primary supervisor.  

Second supervisor eligibility 

The second supervisor must:  

• Be employed by, and usually based at a different SENSS or CAM-DTP partner institution from the primary supervisor; 

• Normally be eligible to be a PhD primary supervisor according to their university’s criteria for UKRI/ESRC-funded studentships; and, 

• Have undertaken approved professional development training in relation to their supervisory role within the last 3 years. 

Supervisor’s responsibilities 

• The primary and second supervisors must confirm that they meet each of the eligibility criteria. 

• The primary and second supervisor must have undertaken equality and diversity and unconscious bias training at their home institution at some point in the last two years.