It is a striking moment for arts and humanities research. Creativity-led work is shaping national conversations on growth, technology, health, place and public value. The growing attention on the creative industries is one powerful demonstration of the arts and humanities mission.
But it is not the whole story.
Across the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) portfolio, there are opportunities for researchers, practitioners, cultural organisations and international partners working to advance and explore arts and humanities knowledge.
At the heart of that offer is curiosity: the freedom to ask new questions, follow evidence, and generate value that begins in scholarship but travels into public life, policy, communities, institutions and the economy.
AHRC’s distinctive contribution is to support that generative space, while helping excellent research flourish: into public services, policy debates and new forms of economic and civic value at home and internationally.
This blog outlines the broad range of funding opportunities we will publish over the coming months, and the wider portfolio they are part of.
Core applicant-led research
Our core applicant-led offer remains the foundation of AHRC’s support for arts and humanities research.
Applicant-led mode is open to the full breadth of our disciplines, from focused projects testing new ideas to collaborations that build fields, methods and partnerships:
- Standard Research Grants support ambitious projects at scale
- Curiosity Awards fuel discovery and prioritise intellectual risk and novelty
- Catalyst Awards support researchers in early translation, prototyping, and cross-sector testing.
Rolling deadlines across the year allow applicants to work to the rhythm that best supports their ideas and partnerships.
Large-scale curiosity-led research
Earlier this month, we launched the outline stage for a new AHRC Large Grants opportunity, building on the Mission pilot and taking forward what we have learned.
The AHRC Large Grants funding opportunity retains the ambition for large-scale, team-convened research, with collaboration at its core, while sharpening the focus on research excellence at scale: intellectually ambitious, methodologically rigorous work that advances knowledge in significant ways.
The full stage will launch in January 2027.
A two-stage process will preserve the openness of applicant-led research while bringing sharper strategic judgement to the final portfolio.
Curiosity-driven research can be bold, collective and transformative, and AHRC wants to back it at scale.
Alongside this, we are beginning to look more carefully across our curiosity-led portfolio: not to direct or narrow the questions researchers ask, but to learn from the capabilities, methods and emerging fields our investments reveal.
As this work develops, we will explore where light-touch coordination, synthesis, cohort working or follow-on support could help excellent applicant-led research travel further and add up to more than the sum of its parts.
Helping ideas travel further
Curiosity-led research also needs routes to travel further.
AHRC Proof of Concept supports previously funded AHRC or UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) research to move towards economic, societal, cultural or policy impact, with flexible support for knowledge exchange, translation, commercialisation, entrepreneurial skills and venture building.
It is open with no closing date, so applicants can come forward when the opportunity is ready.
We will also reinvest in Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAAs) as strategic awards to research organisations.
These provide flexible funding to strengthen engagement with non-academic partners, and early-stage support for progressing research outputs towards the next stage in the pipeline.
Together, Proof of Concept and IAAs keep the arts and humanities sector in the driving seat by facilitating knowledge exchange, market validation and commercialisation.
They also recognise that arts and humanities research can generate economic and social benefits: from new services and commercial opportunities to social innovation, policy change and work that improves lives.
We will also work with our communities to develop practical impact resources. These will reflect the diversity of best practice already emerging across the sector and help researchers adapt the concept of impact to their own questions, partners and contexts.
Back to Bradford: immersive memories that matter
One example is Back to Bradford, an AHRC-supported project that shows curiosity-led arts and humanities research travelling into social innovation, wellbeing and inclusive digital practice.
Led by Dr Ana Barbosa at the University of Bradford, the project uses immersive digital technologies to support people living with dementia.
Participants enter the university’s iGloo, a seven-metre, 360-degree space where images of Bradford’s past and present prompt memories, feelings and conversation.
The project builds on reminiscence-based approaches in dementia care, while testing how immersive environments can support mood, social engagement and wellbeing.
Drawing on archaeology, heritage science, digital health and social care, Back to Bradford connects memory, place, heritage and technology to strengthen wellbeing, preserve collective heritage and create more inclusive digital experiences.
Reminiscence activities are known to improve mood, social engagement, and wellbeing for people with dementia.
Michael Andrews, who was diagnosed with a rare type of dementia called Posterior Cortical Atrophy in 2017, and moved to Bradford from Northern Ireland in 1989, said:
It’s a good project for people with dementia and it will help to bring back memories for the older generation. I enjoyed seeing the older images of Bradford.
The same immersive technology is already being applied in new ways. In a recent project, the University of Bradford recreated Valley Parade in virtual reality, embedding fans’ memories and key moments from the club’s history into a digital replica.
Back to Bradford exemplifies humanities‑led social innovation in action.
It shows AHRC is helping arts and humanities research strengthen social connection, and creates inclusive, human‑centred approaches to wellbeing for those often excluded from traditional cultural and digital experiences.
Investing in people and capability
We also need to invest in the people who will carry arts and humanities research forward. Doctoral Landscape Awards support broad doctoral capability across the disciplines, enabling research organisations to shape provision around their strengths, partnerships and local strategies.
Doctoral Focal Awards add a more sector-facing route: targeted investment where doctoral capability can meet future skills needs and build long-term national capacity.
Following the success of the first round in healthy planet, people and place, and the creative economy, we will launch further focal awards in multilingual futures and art history, visual arts and creative practice.
A regular rhythm of these strategic awards will follow, supporting cohorts so learning, partnerships and capability build across the programme.
We will also work with the School of Advanced Study, drawing on its national role in supporting humanities communities, researcher development and cross-sector connection, to bring the wider humanities sector into our thinking on future skills, capability and public value.
Research infrastructure and collections are part of future capability
AHRC’s major research infrastructures are critical to enabling discovery, collaboration and impact at scale. Investments such as Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS), The Distributed System of Scientific Collections UK (DiSSCo UK) and Convergent screen technologies and performance in realtime (CoSTAR) provide shared national capability, connecting collections, data and facilities, to open up new forms of research and innovation.
They expand access, support advanced and practice‑based methods, and bring together researchers, cultural organisations, industry and international partners.
As an example, RICHeS is AHRC’s long-term investment in research infrastructure for conservation and heritage science, connecting facilities, collections, expertise and data across the UK.
Their Access Fund provides a practical route helping researchers, organisations and heritage professionals meet the costs of accessing specialist equipment, collections and expertise, including mobile units.
This reduces barriers to collaboration and enables more organisations to engage with national research infrastructure.
With round two of the RICHeS Access Fund expected to open soon, the opportunity page is a useful place for researchers and organisations to understand the fund’s purpose and begin shaping future projects and partnerships.
Strengthening international partnerships
International collaboration remains central to AHRC’s offer.
Later this year, AHRC will join the Horizon Europe Partnership on Resilient Cultural Heritage, a 10 -year, €200 million programme focusing on cultural heritage and climate change.
We will support UK researchers to collaborate with international partners, with details of the first call to follow later this year.
Funding opportunities in this area will be informed by the Priority Themes outlined in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.
We will continue the AHRC-DFG bilateral partnership, now operating once every two years for the next five rounds, with the ninth round opening in October 2027.
And we will build on the strength of our existing partnerships while diversifying the International Placement Scheme through equitable collaborations with new museums, archives, collections and research institutions across the African continent.
Emerging opportunities for interdisciplinary research
The Research Programme on Gambling will also open new gambling harms research grants, inviting arts and humanities-led research as part of a wider interdisciplinary portfolio, that deepens understanding of gambling-related harms and supports solutions for prevention and treatment.
This is a complex public policy area where arts and humanities scholarship, methods and leadership can contribute through work on behaviour, regulation, evidence, ethics, lived experience, culture and harm.
Together, these opportunities set out AHRC’s interconnected portfolio: one that nurtures and amplifies curiosity-driven research, helps excellent ideas travel further, and builds the people, partnerships and infrastructure the arts and humanities need for the future.
In doing so, AHRC will continue to invest in research that directly supports UKRI’s mission to advances knowledge, improves lives and drives growth.