Monday 05 October 2026

One of Collaboratory’s core aims is “To enable local people from more diverse backgrounds to succeed in research”. To work towards achieving this, Collaboratory is drawing on the latest research and best practice on equity and inclusion in Higher Education (from leading programmes and organisations such as the Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation programme and Advance HE) to redesign the admissions process for research degree programmes.

Applicant assessment

We assess all Collaboratory PhD and Research Placement applicants using our pioneering competency framework. This framework has been designed to assess candidates as holistic individuals and their potential for success, rather than placing a narrow focus on a more exclusionary, limited set of traditional academic metrics alone.

The competency framework we have developed is adapted from the recently published work of the Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation programme (EDEPI). EDEPI’s work on postgraduate researcher admissions has enabled us to separate out the teachable skills that a candidate can and will learn during a PhD/Research Placement, and which are necessary for a candidate to bring from their priori experience, in order to succeed in a PhD/Research Placement. This allows us to make a fairer and more rigorous assessment of applicants who have a wider variety of skills, experiences, and educational and professional journeys than we would by simply looking at a list of qualifications.

What does this mean for applicants?

When you apply for either a PhD or Research Placement funded by the Collaboratory Research Hub, you will be assessed based on your full range of knowledge, skills, and experience. It doesn’t matter whether you gained this these through professional employment, voluntary roles, studying for a degree, personal life experience, or a mix of all of these – what matters in our process is that you are able to tell us how you gained these knowledge, skills, and experience, and how they prepare you to meet the competencies outlined in the project advert.

We have created a framework of core competencies, which all research candidates should have in order to be successful, and a set of project specific competencies, which a research candidate should have in order to be successful in a particular field of research.

Each PhD and Research Placement project advert includes details of the core and project-specific competencies which applicants are assessed against. These are not intended to be exact checklists. Rather, similarly to a person specification for a job, they have been designed to help you understand if you are right for the project, and to help us make a more well-rounded assessment of your potential to become a successful researcher.

If you feel that you meet most, but not all of the competency criteria, we strongly encourage you to still make an application!

All applications are blinded before being assessed. This means that the supervisors and supporting colleagues who review your application will not see any of your personal identifying information such as your name, gender, ethnicity, address, disability status, etc. 

Removing barriers to success

The Collaboratory Research Hub and all of its partner universities are committed to creating an accessible, equitable, and inclusive research environment for all of our candidates. Our ethos is ‘success for all’ — if you’ve got the talent, the perspectives and the capacity to deliver change, we’ll support you. 

• All partner universities support flexible approaches to working for all candidates to accommodate their personal needs, responsibilities, and ways of working.
• All partner universities support accessibility accommodations for all applicants and successful candidates.
• To help candidates prepare their application, an offline copy of the full application form has been made available as an editable Word document.
• At interview stage, applicants are given details of who will be on their interview panel, and are provided with the core interview questions ahead of time to ensure that applicants are not being assessed on the subjective ability to anticipate lines of questioning.
• To support all applicants in making informed decisions before they choose to apply for a Collaboratory PhD or Research Placement, we have produced an evidence-based guide to understanding what PhDs are and what is involved in doing a PhD (which is also applicable to Research Placements.