A gift of £600,000 from investment management firm Baillie Gifford will be used to establish a new scholarship programme for humanities graduates at Oxford.
Baillie Gifford and Arts and Humanities Research Council Scholarships
Between 2019 and 2023, the Baillie Gifford Scholarship Programme will provide full financial support for 12 DPhil students studying in a range of areas across the arts and humanities. At a time when access to a doctoral education is more important than ever, this new programme will help to ensure that the highest calibre graduate students are able to come to Oxford, regardless of their financial means.
The firm's generous support has been matched with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which was awarded to the University in August as part of the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership. The Doctoral Training Partnership is a unique collaboration between Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the Open University, designed to increase the diversity of the universities' combined doctoral student body and result in benefits for all their doctoral students.
The newly created scholarships will be known as the Baillie Gifford and Arts and Humanities Research Council Scholarships, in recognition of this joint funding.
The Baillie Gifford Writing Partnership Programme
Baillie Gifford's donation will also be used to support a new writing partnership programme at the University. By connecting DPhil and masters' students together, the initiative will seek to facilitate new opportunities for peer mentoring, whilst also helping to encourage and support productive, creative writing habits.
Professor Karen O'Brien, Head of the Humanities Division at Oxford, says: 'We are immensely grateful to Baillie Gifford for the generous and imaginative way in which they have chosen to support future humanities students, through the scholarships and the writing partnership programme. This generosity will certainly be repaid through new insights into history and culture, and new discoveries.'
William Sutcliffe, Investment Partner at Baillie Gifford, says: 'As a graduate employer that places great emphasis on the diversity of disciplines we recruit from, we are delighted to be able to fund these scholarships.'