Data protection statement: Your personal data is being collected and stored for the purposes of campaigning for a change in UKRI's Phase 2 PGR support policy. This letter was co-written by Pandemic PGR and Cambridge UCU. This campaign is being led by Pandemic PGRs and supported by UCU. With your consent below, you may be contacted by Pandemic PGRs regarding campaign action that could be undertaken within your local institution. All data will be stored in a password-protected google form and deleted after a period of 60 days. The list of names will be kept confidential until a minimum benchmark of 100 signatories has been reached. The data controller is Alex Kirby-Reynolds: ajkirby-reynolds1@sheffield.ac.uk



To Sir John Kingman, Chair of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI),
To Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser, Chief Executive, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI),
To Professor Rory Duncan, UK Director of Talent and Skills
To the heads of the seven Research Councils, i.e.
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)


We, the undersigned, write to urge you to revisit the decision of UKRI not to provide blanket funding extensions to doctoral candidates whilst also curbing the level of support available for those Post-Graduate Researchers (PGRs) now in their 2nd and 3rd years. UKRI supplemented this decision with the recommendation to refashion PhD projects in such a way that they can be realised within a shortened timeframe. We welcome UKRI’s commitment to provide extensions for select extreme cases on a needs-priority basis. However, these measures do not at all meet the gravity of the situation for the following reasons:

1. The refashioning of a PhD project ordinarily requires additional time. In order to change their thesis plan, PGR candidates need to retrain in different methodologies, complete additional literature reviews, conduct alternative data collections. Therefore, the refashioning of a PhD is never a panacea to reduced timeframes.

2. PGR students’ access to resources has been suspended in full or in part for 8 months and may not be reinstated in full or in part for some time, severely reducing the timescale in which to realise a PhD project. These include limited access to crucial university resources (e.g. laboratory space or library collections), external resources (e.g. archives and partner organisations), and the ability to undertake international travel for fieldwork. This is a very significant reduction in the time available to realise a PhD project.

3. Besides direct disruption to their research, a large number of PGR have faced unprecedented pressures resultant from the pandemic. These include complications compounded by mental health, disabilities, caring responsibilities, grievances, or prolonged periods of personal illness. We note these reasons were identified as grounds for extension under the initial UKRI review conducted in the early summer.

4. Protracted pressures and constraints escalates the detrimental impact of the pandemic on PGRs’ mental health, with profound consequences for their personal and professional lives.

5. The disruption to PGRs’ work has been sustained and is ongoing and already exceeds the six months of potential extension funding the UKRI offered to final-year doctoral candidates in April 2020.

6. Supporting a PGR to refashion their thesis project prompts significant increases in workload for PGR supervisors, PGR research directors, and academic support staff. It would additionally produce an amount of casework that will be difficult for funding bodies to themselves process.

7. Failure to provide funding extensions will disproportionately affect PGR from deprived backgrounds and those unable to self-supplement their doctoral studies through private funds. A reduced PhD output will severely hamper the employment prospect of these PGRs in an academic job market that is more and more competitive. Such a move thus entrenches privileged access to academia, and will undo years of efforts in diversity and widening participation policies undertaken by UK universities.

This decision will ultimately disarm a generation of PGR students, and therefore has detrimental consequences for knowledge production, the global reputation of postgraduate research in the UK, and subsequently the employment prospects of UK-trained PGRs in higher education and other sectors.

We call on UKRI to stand by its commitment to ‘world-leading research and innovation to push the frontiers of human knowledge’ by revisiting this damaging decision. A revised policy should provide a base funding extension for up to six months for all UKRI-funded doctoral students, while also providing targeted support for PGRs with additional needs in relation to the pandemic (including disabled PGRs, those with caring responsibilities, and those whose research requires international travel and other unadaptable features).

These extensions fulfil the recommendation made by NatCen in their UKRI-commissioned research to guarantee ‘a base level of financial support to all UKRI-funded doctoral students regardless of year group’. Funding bodies must not adopt a case-by-case consultant approach to grant funding extensions. We urge UKRI to prioritise the intellectual production, scholastic communion, and mental and physical health of UKRI-funded doctoral students in these difficult times.

Signed