£1 million funding to support new doctoral research into arts and humanities and of outer space
Credit: NASA
New national funding will support a cohort of doctoral students investigating how humanity has imagined, experienced and interacted with outer space across time at the University of Leicester.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, has provided £1 million funding for doctoral studentships, in collaboration with the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space, one of three Leverhulme-funded research centres to benefit from funding to support interdisciplinary postgraduate research.
Over the next six years, the AHRC Doctoral Focal Award in Humanity and Space will support nine doctoral scholarships for interdisciplinary projects (re-)shaping our understanding of the meaning and value of outer space from the distinctive angle of the arts and humanities.
Doctoral students will be based at Space Park Leicester, which also hosts the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space. Working in collaboration with several external partners, the doctoral scholarships will include a unique element of professional training aimed at equipping PhD holder with the intellectual and practical experience to be competitive in the space sector.
Students will be part of a cohort and benefit from a structured package of training and professional development, alongside the intellectual stimulus of a centre built around shared questions. They will also build specialist and transferable skills for diverse career paths, within and beyond academia, including across the growing UK space sector.
Professor Rossana Deplano of Leicester Law School, and Director of the Doctoral Focal Award, said: “The Doctoral Focal Award in Humanity and Space is yet another recognition of our distinctive arts and humanities expertise on outer space at Leicester. It provides a unique platform for students to think creatively and make a real impact in society. I very much look forward to collaborating with colleagues across University – those already involved and anyone who would like to further enrich our shared, interdisciplinary research environment.”
With nearly 10,000 satellites orbiting our planet, many aspects of our lives are entwined with space technology. But the challenges ahead are profound: creating new societies, laws and systems that govern human existence beyond Earth.
This Doctoral Focal Award is the latest of a series of concerted actions and activities supported by the College of Social Sciences Arts and Humanities examining what our future and relationship in space will look like. The creation of the Humanising Space Working Group in September 2022 and the approval of the interdisciplinary MA in Space and Society in 2025 form part of ongoing efforts to explore how social sciences, arts and humanities research can contribute to the space industry and wider debates in society.
In 2025, the University of Leicester received a record £10m investment to establish the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space to explore how the final frontier is reshaping our lives. The Centre aims to increase the understanding of how humans engage with and experience space through a series of research projects over a 10-year period.