St Andrews, Dundee and Stirling universities are among a consortium sharing £14 million of funding to support the arts and humanities.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council has given the funds to a doctoral training partnership to support postgraduate studentships and training to the consortium being led by Glasgow, and including Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Strathclyde universities and Glasgow School of Art.
This success has been reinforced by the commitment of up to £1.8m from the Scottish Funding Council to support the establishment of a Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities.
The culmination of more than two years of cooperative working between the partners, the partnership will see 200 funded studentships over the next five years.
The scheme will be managed by the newly-created SGSAH, which will be administered from Glasgow University where vice-principal and head of the college of arts Professor Murray Pittock described it as a “potentially transformative step” and one which allowed strategic decisions affecting Scottish postgraduate education to be made in Scotland.
Dr Grant Macaskill, who represents St Andrews on the consortium steering group, said: “We are delighted by the news of this successful bid.
“The scheme will be managed by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, with which St Andrews will be involved, and will ensure that the postgraduate sector in arts and humanities throughout Scotland is further resourced and empowered to generate high quality research.”
More than 30 organisations are supporting the work, ranging from Dundee Repertory Theatre to the National Galleries Scotland to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.