Hello! John here from the SGSAH office taking over the blog for today to give you a quick update on what is going on at the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities. The start of the year is a busy time for SGSAH so we thought it best to pop into the blog and chat about what we’ve been up to.

The big event at the start of every year is the SGSAH AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership Scholarship which moves onto the second stage of the application process. The first stage is done by our member HEIs with application processes that are individual to each institution which we have no input on. Stage two is where our involvement begins. We open an online application portal which all students who were successful in stage one are apply through. It is an extremely competitive scholarship and a lot of our time is being spent helping ensure applicants are able to get their application submitted successfully. This has meant answering emails and phone-calls as usual, but this year we decided to take that support online!

For the first time we ran online question and answer sessions for any questions related to the AHRC DTP Scholarship. Using Adobe Connect we hosted three separate sessions lasting an hour and invited people to pop in and ask away. The questions varied from very specific questions about the application to broader topics relating to the content of the training programme supplied by SGSAH as part of the scholarship. It’s a format we’ll look to explore in the future. An online chat invites a different type of question, often a question you might not ask us over the phone or on email as that seems so much more formal. Basically all about giving you all the option to talk to us in a variety of ways.

Speaking of the AHRC DTP Scholarship we had our 1^st year residential event for those students in their first year of their AHRC DTP funding. Our first year event is held in Stirling at the wonderful Stirling Court Hotel which we’ve used for a few years now. This event is a bit of an office favourite as it is our first real chance to get to know the new cohort after the introductions of the welcome event in November. One of the great parts of this job is getting to know the researchers, hearing about the work going on and getting to know people, the 1^st year residential lets you do all that. We got the students to think about funding, presentation skills, social media and what SGSAH can offer. We also had a look around Stirling castle and even had a ceilidh thanks to the guys at It’s No’ Reel (see picture above). A fun time had by all and we were delighted to see the cohort approach the weekend with such enthusiasm.

The trip to the castle was on a wonderfully foggy day, very atmospheric. Thanks to Katerina Pantoula for the picture!

Beyond our funded groups there have been a few other things. Our Researchers in Residence applications closed with Anna now busy sorting through applications. Material Culture: The Stuff of Research has been busy with submissions to the symposium closing as well as days 3 and 4 of the course running at the start of February in Edinburgh and Glasgow. There has been a veritable banquet of Cohort Development Funded events going on/getting ready to start including R for Arts, War Through Other Stuff, In & Out of Space, PGRNS Researching Gender Across Disciplines and lots more. There isn’t enough space to talk about all of them so I’d urge you to go the SGSAH opportunities page and read through what’s on offer.

And finally has been preparations for the SGSAH Summer School 2017. Yes, we’re already thinking of Summer. Workshops are being planned, venues are being booked and the call for submissions for the Doctoral Research Showcase is out (apply now!). The Summer School is very much that big event on the horizon but planning is going well and we’re hopeful that, by taking your feedback into account, we can have three days of great workshops and events for you all to get involved in.

I’m running out of space so I’ll just start shouting about things. ARCS applications close at the end of February! We’re currently running a course on sound archives with Scotland’s Sounds! A Creative Enlightenment is back for 2017 with an incredible looking programme! 3^rd year AHRC DTP training is in March!

We have so much on, lots of other things we can’t talk about just yet. I really mean it when I say we have something for everyone so please get involved. You can follow us on Twitter where I’ll keep you up to date on the latest news. We’re also on Facebook where we try to use the extra space to go into more detail on opportunities. And you can subscribe to our mailing list, we send out a monthly newsletter which collects the biggest stories and delivers them straight to your mailbox.

Thanks for listening, hope you found the insight into SGSAH HQ helpful. I’ll now pass you back to Lucie.