Guidance notes for Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships at The National Archives

What is a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership?

The Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) scheme is an ideal opportunity for academics to engage with the cultural heritage sector, collaborate with The National Archives’ research-active experts, and support a student to develop a unique research pathway.

CDP studentships are fully funded by the AHRC for four years (full-time students) or eight years (part-time students).

CDP studentships are project-based, with the research topic developed by academics based at Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in collaboration with The National Archives’ staff. Each studentship must be designed to support the work and objectives of The National Archives as outlined in our Research Vision.

Students are co-supervised by two staff at the HEI and two staff at The National Archives. CDP studentships are characterised by the working collaboration between the HEI partner, The National Archives, and the student. They offer students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a cultural institution and carry out research within a working environment.

Applicant eligibility

Potential HEI supervisors need to be academic staff at Research Organisations (ROs) directly supported by the UK funding councils.

All expressions of interest should be completed by the potential academic first co-supervisor, in collaboration with a potential first co-supervisor at The National Archives.

Each member of staff at The National Archives can only be named as first co-supervisor on one CDP expression of interest per year.

Staff at The National Archives can supervise a maximum of two PhD students as first supervisor at any one time. If workload and circumstances allow, a member of staff who is the first supervisor of two PhD students may be able to take on the role of second supervisor for one additional student.

We encourage applicants to consider the diversity of their proposed supervisory team, in terms of demographics and career stage. Prospective PhD students cannot apply for the CDP scheme at this stage. Please take a look at the CDP website.

Our areas of research interest

CDP projects need to engage with one or more of The National Archives’ emerging areas of research priority as outlined in our Research Vision:

• Trusted and secure custodianship
• A responsible, sustainable future
• Global, inclusive access
• The archive within and for society

This year, we are particularly interested in:

• Digital and physical preservation: the long-term preservation of born-digital records, and collection permanence vs sustainable practice in conservation.
• Parchment characterisation and cleaning (e.g laser cleaning, multiphoton microscopy).
• Histories of preservation and/or environmental or ecological histories in the archive
• Indigenous histories through state archives, histories of enslavement and/or tracing international trade through historical and material study of our collection.
• Automated and/or AI-driven data enrichment, cataloguing and linking.
• Enhancing access to our collection through OCR/HTR, open standards (e.g. IIIF) and emerging technologies such as 3D imaging or generative AI.
• The National Archives’ photographic collections, the history of photography in the UK and overseas, and the materiality of early photographic processes.
• The history of intellectual property, advertising, public information and/or of the creative industries.

Initial enquiries

All academics interested in co-supervising a CDP PhD should inform the Research Impact, Culture and Engagement team in the first instance. Please contact us with a short summary of your PhD idea and how it meets one of our emerging research priorities.

If you already know a member of staff at The National Archives that you would like to co-supervise with, please include them in your email. If you do not have an existing contact at The National Archives, our team can potentially match you up with an appropriate co-supervisor.

Once we receive your initial enquiry, we will let you know if we can support your expression of interest.

Initial enquiries deadline

Please submit your initial enquiry to research@nationalarchives.gov.uk by 17:00 on 1 October 2025.

Expression of interest

If you receive a positive response to your initial enquiry, please complete the expression of interest form in collaboration with your proposed first co-supervisor at The National Archives.

Expression of interest deadline

Please submit your expression of interest to research@nationalarchives.gov.uk by 17:00 on 15 October 2025.

Resubmissions

We do not generally invite resubmissions of ideas submitted to The National Archives in previous CDP rounds.

Assessment criteria

Expressions of interest will be sifted by an internal panel at The National Archives. The panel will include TNA’s Head of Research, Grants and Academic Engagement, and colleagues based in at least three different research areas from across the organisation. It will draw on feedback provided by an external panel of academics and a TNA CDP student representative.

Expressions of interest will be assessed on a 1-5 scale, according to the following criteria:

• Strategic relevance: how does the research fit with TNA’s strategic objectives, priorities and research themes as outlined in our Research Vision?
• Strength of the collaboration: why does this need to be a collaborative project and how does this collaboration add value to TNA’s research portfolio?
• Quality and innovation: what innovative contribution will this project make to TNA and its areas of work?
• Feasibility: is the project appropriate for a PhD and is there staff capacity at TNA to supervise?

Outcome

We expect to share results of the expression of interest phase by 14 November 2025.

The National Archives will review and provide brief feedback on all expressions of interest. Our panel will select a maximum of eight projects to be developed into full CDP proposals which will need to submitted by 12th December 2025.

These proposals will be assessed by an external panel of academics in January 2026, and four studentships will be nominated for AHRC funding. Applicants will be informed of the outcome and given feedback on their proposals.

The selected studentships will be advertised to students, to start in October 2026.

Expectations regarding diversity, equity and inclusion

The National Archives is part of the Civil Service. The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. If your CDP proposal is successful, we will expect the following actions from the supervisory team in relation to student recruitment:

• The collection of anonymised demographic data relating to applicants, which will be shared with The National Archives to allow us to monitor the diversity of CDP applicants.
• Reasonable adjustments and support for applicants with a named contact at both The National Archives and the HEI for students to reach out to regarding this.
• Adherence to The National Archives’ recruitment best practice.