Funding boost for East Midlands universities to spark student interest into research careers

De Montfort University, Leicester (DMU) has secured funding from a £33.2 million initiative to offer fully-funded master's programmes, designed to inspire health and social care graduates to pursue research careers and enhance healthcare quality.

The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) has funded universities across 12 regions in England as part of the new INSIGHT: Inspiring Students into Research scheme- aiming to attract students and graduates in health, social care, and public health into the full range of research careers.

(Photo credit: National Cancer Institute on Unsplash)

The East Midlands has been given £2.59million to fund scholarship places on three master’s courses, including DMU’s MSc Social Research (Health), and two others at the University of Nottingham, the lead institution for the regional programme.

Thirty scholarships will be available each year in 2024, 2025 and 2026, and these will cover full master’s fees on the three approved master’s programmes, along with a stipend.

The bid for funding was led by Dr Sally Ruane from Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at DMU, along with Dr Claire Diver from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham, and Professor Emma Wilson from the School of Medicine at Nottingham.

Dr Ruane, Reader in Social Policy at DMU, said: “We are delighted to be working with colleagues at the University of Nottingham and other partners in a scheme which provides such important opportunities to early career professionals.

“We want to adopt an inclusive approach which succeeds in recruiting students from a diverse range of professional groups”.

Dr Diver, Associate Professor in Physiotherapy at University of Nottingham and the NIHR East Midlands Programme Lead, added: “This provides an exciting opportunity to inspire our new and recent graduates that work in these professions, to provide the skills to embed research in all aspects of their careers and ultimately improve health and care outcomes for populations in the East Midlands."

The programme in the East Midlands has two main aims:

• To show students training in these professions, and those recently graduated, what opportunities there are for them to use research in their jobs, and to think about opportunities for jobs that do research. The team will work collaboratively with partners and collaborators to offer opportunities to engage with research training external to the academic programmes. 

•  To provide training provide training in research for these professional groups so they can have the knowledge and skills to understand and do research that will help the people they work with and services they work in. This will be delivered through fully-funded masters’ training.

Professor Waljit Dhillo, Dean of the NIHR Academy, said: “We know how important early exposure to research is for helping students and early career professionals develop the knowledge and skills needed to join the research workforce and build successful research careers in the future.

 “The INSIGHT programme will offer over 300 funded research masters places per year and provide engagement activities that have the potential to excite and capture the imagination of students at an early stage in their career.  

“I’m delighted that we can invest in our next generation of researchers in the East Midlands this way, and show students all of the benefits that research roles and careers have to offer.”