The name change reflects the new Doctoral College’s enhanced role and remit supporting our research community.
The name change reflects the new Doctoral College’s enhanced role and remit supporting our research community.
As the new Doctoral College, we will continue to look after our more than 1000 PGR students and their 600+ supervisors, but we will also take on responsibility for all researcher training, and will have a key role in organising and promoting research culture across the whole University.
The Doctoral College name will emphasise our role in fostering supportive research communities while reducing confusion about our services. The Graduate School title has meant that some students and staff in the past have thought we were focussed on Master’s programmes, and even that we were the area of the University responsible for providing tickets for Graduation Ceremonies!
For similar reasons, most UK University Graduate Schools or their equivalent have gone over to the Doctoral College (or similar) nomenclature in the last 5 years, so there will also be greater clarity when communicating with other institutions. Apart from more clearly describing what we do, we hope the Doctoral College name will also signal our emphasis and focus on building communities of researchers within the University.
What to expect
You will notice that most of our materials will start to show us as the Doctoral College rather than the Graduate School from the New Year. As documents or websites come up for review, we’ll take the opportunity to change the name over. Don’t worry if you forget our new name, as the old Graduate School contacts and pages will redirect to our new Doctoral College email addresses and web pages for at least another year.
We hope the name change will be complete by July 2025 in time for our annual Festival of Doctoral Research, where we hope you’ll be able to celebrate the research and contributions of our amazing research students as well as our new identity.