The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) has secured significant investment as part of the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)’s newly announced Doctoral Focal Awards programme announced today, 3rd July. The award is designed to champion the next generation of researchers and academics, offering future-facing training in areas vital to the UK’s creative economy and societal well-being.
The funding will enable the GSA, in collaboration with the Open University and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), to create a distributed training college of twenty doctoral researchers, recruited from across Scotland’s rural and island communities. The seven-year programme of doctoral study and enterprise training will support PhD researchers based in these communities, developing talent in situ and helping to address regional inequalities and underrepresentation in the doctoral college and creative economy, in support of national economic ambitions.
Building on the GSA’s growing rural footprint— including its Highlands & Islands campus and newly launched GSA Rural Lab research centre, both based in Moray— this award represents a strategic expansion of the GSA’s presence across Scotland, and a significant investment in place-driven and craft-led innovation, enterprise, and knowledge exchange.
The GSA’s vision, titled ‘A Golden Thread: Crafting the Creative Economy from Scotland’s Highlands, Lowlands & Islands’, aims to strengthen Scotland’s craft sector— a vital, 80% women-led industry that contributes an estimated £70 million every year to the Scottish economy, yet remains undervalued as an industrial sector. The programme aims to generate wider economic and social impacts through supporting interdisciplinary study at the intersection of craft and future-focused industries such as space, biomaterials, and regenerative design.
This world-class doctoral training programme is designed to drive and embed enterprise, innovation, and economic progress, while opening new pathways into doctoral study for underrepresented communities.
“This significant AHRC Focal Award is a powerful endorsement of our vision for place-driven, innovation-led education. It enables the GSA to extend our footprint across rural Scotland, creating a distributed training model that connects local creative and craft economies with national priorities and global agendas,” says Professor Penny Macbeth, Director & Principal of The Glasgow School of Art.
“Critically, this transformative investment addresses underrepresentation in the doctoral college as well as Scotland’s craft sector, closely aligning with and building on the work of GSA Rural Lab, launched in April this year and positioning us as a key player in Scotland’s rural economic strategy.”
Professor Irene McAra-McWilliam OBE, Deputy Director and Vice Principal (Research and Innovation) at The Glasgow School of Art, and Director of the GSA Highlands & Islands Campus, adds: “By fostering research talent in communities across Scotland’s Highlands, Islands and Lowlands, this programme will tackle regional inequalities and unlock fresh creative potential. This award is not just an investment in doctoral training – it’s an investment in Scotland’s creative innovation economy and in the global impact of rural enterprise.”
“At the heart of this programme is equality of access to world-class postgraduate training”, says Dr Clare Devaney, GSA Senior Researcher (Innovation) and Project Lead.
‘Innovations include wraparound mental health and wellbeing support for students and supervisors, a bespoke package of industry-led coaching, mentoring and enterprise development training, digitally enabled delivery and ‘in motion’ evaluation. We are delighted to lead this programme from GSA Rural Lab, and look forward to working with our academic, sector and community partners in realising its transformative potential.”
Recruitment for the GSA-led PhD programme will start in January 2026, with the first cohort beginning in September 2026. The programme will grow to 20 students by 2029/30, with graduations until 2033. Read the AHRC Focal Awards full press release HERE.
For further information please contact press@gsa.ac.uk
