Focal awards: multilingual futures for UK growth and connectivity

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is offering doctoral focal awards to unlock linguistic and cultural expertise to build high-level skills, innovation capacity, and global connections that underpin the UK's growth and prosperity. This opportunity will support consortium-model doctoral training grants in languages research. AHRC will support up to 20 studentships per award over four cohorts, with the first cohort starting in October 2028. The awards aim to deliver world-class doctoral training, provide opportunities for diverse career paths, support research capacity in strategic areas, address underrepresentation in the AHRC-funded doctoral community, and enhance collaboration within academia and between academia and other sectors. Each proposal must outline approaches to doctoral training, professional development, and increasing representation of students from underrepresented groups. Applications must involve a minimum of two higher education institutions and one partner beyond academia. The opportunity responds to evidence of declining capacity in language-grounded disciplines and seeks to enable UK growth and renew UK leadership in multilingual, globally connected research.