CAM Doctoral Training Partnership

The UK Research Councils are funding a network of doctoral training partnerships that will shape how the next generation of social scientists learns to do research. This matters because the quality and direction of future social science—from studies of education inequality to economic behaviour to public policy effectiveness—depends on how well early-career researchers are trained. Without coordinated investment in doctoral training, the UK risks losing its ability to produce the skilled researchers needed to tackle complex societal challenges. The potential impact is structural rather than immediate. If these partnerships succeed, they will create a more coherent, well-resourced pipeline for producing PhD graduates who can work across disciplines and with non-academic partners. This affects systems people rarely think about: how government policies are evaluated, how public services are designed, and how businesses understand consumer behaviour and workforce dynamics. This is primarily a capacity-building and infrastructure investment. It does not produce a single research finding, but it enables the fundamental social science that underpins evidence-based decision-making across every sector of society.