British Library - British Library Scholarships

British Library Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships

You will receive a fully funded four-year PhD studentship. You will undertake the fellowship partly at the British Library in London and partly at a British university. Funding is provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the UK’s public funding body for research in the arts and humanities. In addition to the scholarship, the British Library provides up to approximately 1,150 EUR per year (up to 1,000 GBP) to cover research costs such as travel to collections. You will also spend 3 to 6 months undertaking additional training or work placements, and will work directly with curators at the British Library alongside your supervisors at the university. In October 2026, four PhD projects will commence on topics such as collection history, new narratives, innovations in librarianship, and cultural policy and practice.

Who can apply

• Level: You are starting a PhD programme, not a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree.
• Field: Projects in the fields of the arts and humanities that draw on the British Library’s collections, for example in the fields of history, linguistics or cultural studies.
• Where you study: You enrol at the British university running the project and spend most of your time working in the library in London.
• Nationality: Any nationality can apply.

How to apply

The British universities will initially develop the four projects in collaboration with the British Library. Once the projects have been finalised, the partner universities will recruit students in the spring and summer, before the programme begins in October 2026. You therefore apply for a specific scholarship via the university running the relevant project. Check the application deadline on that university’s recruitment page.

How realistic are your chances?

Only four of these scholarships are awarded per cycle, and each is tied to a specific project and a specific university, so competition for each place is very fierce. If your background matches one of the advertised topics and you can explain why the British Library’s collections are relevant to your research, you’ll be applying against a small, high-calibre field of candidates. Keep a close eye on the university’s application deadline, as each project accepts only one student.