Doctoral Focal Award: Environmental Evidence Synthesis

Doctoral Focal Award: Environmental Evidence Synthesis

Supports university consortia building environmental evidence-synthesis training and doctoral pathways across United Kingdom academic institutions.

NERC and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) are jointly funding up to two Doctoral Focal Awards focused on environmental evidence synthesis. Each award is worth up to £4.072 million, giving a combined pool of up to £8.144 million. Each award will fund 30 notional studentships delivered across three annual intake cohorts between 2027 and 2030, with the programme expected to start by 1 October 2027. The awards are institutional bids — they go to consortia of universities, not individual researchers.

ESRC co-funds six social science studentships per award; as a condition of the joint funding, each applicant team must include at least one social scientist. The scheme targets advanced evidence synthesis methodologies in environmental science, aligned with NERC's Forward Look priorities. Only UK universities and NERC-eligible research organisations are eligible; for-profit organisations and individuals cannot apply. A notification of intent was due by 27 May 2026 — teams that did not submit an intention by that date should contact NERC directly before proceeding. Full applications close 15 July 2026.

The assessment process will evaluate the quality and ambition of the proposed doctoral training environment, the credibility of the evidence synthesis research agenda, cross-disciplinary integration between environmental and social science, and the team's track record in training. Consortia should articulate a distinct doctoral programme identity, not simply an aggregation of individual supervisors, and should demonstrate infrastructure for the multi-year studentship pipeline. The joint NERC-ESRC funding structure means proposals that treat social science as peripheral rather than genuinely co-designed are unlikely to succeed.