CHASE Partnerships Strategy 2024 - 2027

CHASE is the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts Southeast England. CHASE is a partnership of eight institutions, the Universities of East Anglia, Essex, Kent and Sussex, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths, University of London, Birkbeck, University of London and SOAS, University of London. Collectively referred to as CHASE member institutions, the consortium is engaged in collaborative research activities including an AHRC doctoral training partnership (DTP).

CHASE works with a broad range of organisations, institutions and businesses to support our ambitions for knowledge exchange, providing work placements and other training and development opportunities for our doctoral researchers. Over the past nine years, we have worked with a wide range of partners in a variety of sectors, providing access to work experience and professional development for our cohort of doctoral researchers.

As we approach our tenth anniversary we have set forth our ambitions to deliver on new strategic partner relationships. CHASE will work with a broad base of partners including private, commercial, public, academic and third-sector organisations. Our ambitions are built on three pillars. Employability, Impact and Knowledge Exchange, and Internationalisation.

Our existing partnerships have many strengths that we can continue to leverage to develop our doctoral researchers. We however recognise that there are gaps we can address to provide a holistic service for our cohort. To address these gaps will undertake a series of actions in each of our core partnership pillars.

CHASE is open to collaboration and welcomes expressions of interest from businesses, charities third sector organisations and institutions interested in working with and connecting to cohorts of researchers conducting groundbreaking research in Social Sciences, Humanities & the Arts for People and the Economy. Contact the team at enquiries@chase.ac.uk to find out more.

Employability

Image of a briefcase and magnifying glass

CHASE has a core ambition to improve the employability prospects for the consortium's entire cohort of doctoral researchers. We will work with partners to provide work placement and internship opportunities that enhance CHASE doctoral researchers' skills, expertise and experiences. This will be achieved via the following core actions.

  • We will set up a series of subject-specific clusters of partnerships within member institutions to strengthen graduate outcomes in our most common placement subject areas, such as the Creative Arts and Media,  Public Policy, Heritage, and the Third Sector. These partnership clusters will work alongside our existing networks and training, providing mutual benefits to CHASE and our partners.

  • We will set up a core strategic group of partners with whom we can develop focused relationships where we co-create and deliver on joint initiatives to support the collective ambitions, which for CHASE will include working with partners across training, research and work placements.

  • We will survey CHASE alumni and identify some of the key sectors where our graduates go to work after their PhDs and then review any gaps in our partnership portfolio to determine what sectors we may need to develop new, or strengthen existing partner relationships.  

Impact and Knowledge Exchange

CHASE as a collective has extensive pathways to knowledge exchange. We will continue to work with partners to develop and deliver high-impact and mutually beneficial knowledge exchange initiatives.

The following actions will enable us to achieve this.

  • We will strategically embed research dissemination in appropriate partnership projects and maximise visibility with high-impact case studies. In line with this, we will offer training to the cohort on recording and tracking their research impact.

  • We will connect with the Knowledge Exchange Managers/Officers at CHASE member institutions and explore opportunities to support existing institutional partnerships by making viable and mutually beneficial knowledge exchange connections for the CHASE cohort.

Internationalisation

CHASE doctoral researchers work with a range of international organisations however none of these relationships are strategic for  CHASE. We will aim to embed meaningful and mutually beneficial international connections in our engagement with partners. This includes partnerships with the global south where connections to various issues including decolonisation feature.

  • Recognising that Arts and Humanities graduates can build careers in any part of the world, we will develop new mutually beneficial international partnerships. These partners will be part of our core group of CHASE strategic partners and we will collaborate with them at all levels – placements, training and research to advance the employability of CHASE doctoral researchers.