White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre

Doctoral Training Centre in Social Sciences

About the White Rose Doctoral Training Centre

The White Rose Doctoral Training Centre in Social Sciences (DTC) was established in January 2011 with an investment from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to provide a national training centre for postgraduate researchers in social sciences, including the funding of 48 scholarships per year (pro rata).

In 2012/13, the DTC is offering 52 new studentships across the White Rose Universities, including four themed studentship Networks, and a range of available ESRC scholarships at Leeds.

By combining the expertise of the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, the DTC will deliver excellent supervision, first class training and vibrant intellectual environments for postgraduate research students.

The Centre aims to train scientists to meet the demands of future global challenges whether working within industry, academia or government. We offer an exciting disciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to postgraduate research training, combining taught and research elements.

The DTC offers a range of studentships across core disciplines and interdisciplinary areas, meaning greater scope for ground-breaking research projects. Students will have access to national and international networks of industrial partners, opinion formers, policy makers and academics, enabling us to produce doctoral graduates with outstanding skills and flexibility.

The Centre is based around twenty clusters of training pathways in the following areas:

• core subject areas  of Sociology and Social Policy, Politics and International Relations, Human Geography, Psychology and Management and Business
• capacity building in Economics, Education, Socio-legal Studies, Language Based  Area Studies, Social Work
• interdisciplinary fields of International Development, Planning, Environment and Sustainability, Linguistics, Social History and Communications
• and ESRC Challenge clusters of Health and Wellbeing, Security, Conflict and Justice, and Science and Technology Studies.

In each of these clusters, students will have access to high quality training and supervision at their host institution, and opportunities for engagement with students at other institutions within the pathway, through special events and other kinds of  joint provision such as summer schools.

The Leeds Social Sciences Institute also offers a range of seminars and events for students to engage with others studying in different subject areas, and to address interdisciplinary concerns as well as accessing a wide array of training courses and skills development  opportunities.

The White Rose DTC will also organise conferences and events involving social scientists from all three institutions, notably a White Rose DTC Induction conference for new starters and a White Rose Annual conference for social science PGR students across our three institutions.

• The initial Launch event for the DTC took place on 1 November 2011
• Download presentations and see photographs from the launch event on the University of Sheffield website

A range of training events, one day specialist conferences and residential courses focusing on skills development in areas such as impact and entrepreneurship will also be developed.