Professor Kate Lacey

Professor Alan Garnham

The Doctoral School is delighted to announce a number of appointments to Doctoral Training Partnerships.

Professor Kate Lacey (School of Media Film & Music) has been appointed as Director of the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts, South East England (CHASE).

Professor Lacey was appointed following an internal recruitment process with input from all members of the CHASE consortium of university institutions. She will take over from the current Director, Dr Denise deCaires Narain, from 1 August.

Founded in 2013, CHASE is a consortium of nine university institutions which supports research in the arts and humanities. Sussex is the lead university for the consortium which was recently awarded a second doctoral training grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council worth £17.3 million to fund five cohorts of studentships under the Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTP) 2 programme. In DTP2, CHASE will continue to support innovative and collaborative researcher development, to ensure that arts and humanities PhDs are able to use their skills in a range of careers.

Dr deCaires Narain has served as CHASE Director for three years, leading on the successful funding bid and welcoming SOAS and Birkbeck as full members of the consortium.

CHASE has also appointed a Deputy Director, Professor Jo Drugan, who is Professor of Translation at the School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia.

Under a separate recruitment process within Sussex, Professor Alan Garnham has been re-appointed as the Sussex Academic Lead to the South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS) ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership.

Commencing in 2017, SeNSS is one of 14 ESRC Doctoral Training Partnerships under the leadership of the University of Essex. The SeNSS award totalled £10.5m over five years, and supports the funding and development of approximately 45 Doctoral Researchers every year.

Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Shute, said: “I am delighted to see that Kate and Alan will provide these two doctoral training partnerships with the excellent leadership they require, and I would like to thank Denise deCaires Narain for her leadership of CHASE over the last three years. I’m confident that both of these prestigious DTPs will continue to meet the future needs of our doctoral research community.

“Sussex is proud of its co-ordinating role in CHASE and as a consortium member of SeNSS. We remain committed to supporting doctoral researchers as an essential part of the University community.”

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