The University of Liverpool has been awarded £2.1M as part of £6.9M funding awarded by UKRI's BBSRC-NERC Doctoral Landscape Awards (DLA) to expand the Addressing the Challenges of Changing Environments (ACCE) doctoral training partnership.
The Partnership provides doctoral training in the environmental sciences and related disciplines, undertaking cutting edge research and tackling environmental science questions of global significance.
Led by the University, and training researchers based in the faculties of Health and Life Sciences and Science and Engineering, the expanded partnership known as ACCE+ includes partner organisations the Universities of Sheffield and York, the Natural History Museum, the National Oceanography Centre and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. More than 40 other organisations spanning industry, charity and policy-related organisations are collaborative partners of the DLA.
Across the Partnership, ACCE+ has been awarded £6.9M by UKRI, with total value of funding for the programme of £9.7 million including both UKRI and University contributions. This funding will support 95 studentships across the partnership over five years, with the first cohort of students starting in October 2025.
The University of Liverpool's Professor Andy Fenton, who leads the partnership, said: "ACCE+ combines world-class research with partner organisations from the public and private sectors to deliver a training programme that will develop motivated, confident PhD students performing outstanding, distinctive research. We aim to develop doctoral graduates that not only fill sector-wide skills gaps but who are also equipped to understand, communicate, and address challenges associated with the nature, causes, and consequences of changes in the natural environment at all scales."
ACCE+ will take bold steps to enhance doctoral training even further, building on the highly successful ACCE partnership, which has trained circa 250 postgraduates since 2014, and has a proven track record of excellence in postgraduate research and training, including pioneering approaches to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
ACCE+ has 4 Objectives:
- Design and execute research projects in a distinctive manner that creates a cohesive, challenge-led, and interdisciplinary learning environment in which students have a shared goal to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of environmental change.
- Integrate end-user involvement into every level of the research and training to ensure that activities and outcomes are aligned with the needs of society to address environmental challenges as perceived across a wide range of sectors.
- Deliver an integrated programme of structured training at the individual and cohort level that ensures every student is empowered to reach their potential and deliver genuine change as future leaders addressing the challenges of a changing environment.
- Introduce, undertake, evaluate and continually improve processes that engender a genuinely diverse, supportive, and inclusive community of researchers.
