Oxford Brookes-led consortium wins UKRI funding to tackle barriers to creating healthier places

A consortium led by Oxford Brookes University has been awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to investigate the barriers to creating healthier places—for people and the planet.

The Architectural Design and Humanities Promoting Transformation (AD[A]PT) Consortium, led by Oxford Brookes, has received the funding under the AHRC’s inaugural Doctoral Focal Award. The award will support 20 fully funded postgraduate studentships at three partnering universities, Oxford Brookes, Cardiff University and Falmouth University, starting from October 2026.

The initiative aims to bridge the gap between research and practice in designing healthy places. Doctoral students will work on projects shaped in collaboration with a 13-member Industry Steering Group representing key sectors:

• Architecture, design and planning: Royal Institute of British Architects, Design Commission for Wales and Royal Town Planning Institute; 
• Heritage: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Historic England, Cadw; 
• Landscape: Landscape Institute;
• Housing: Chartered Institute of Housing - Cymru; 
• Construction and engineering: Chartered Institute of Building, Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; and
• Health and life enrichment:  Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, and Circus Eruption. 

Studentships will be shared across the three universities, hosted within their respective schools of architecture, design and the built environment. Students will benefit from shared training and development opportunities across the consortium. Around half of the studentships will be offered as Collaborative Doctoral Awards which embed candidates within a partner organisation for part of their degree. This will ensure their research is both academically rigorous and grounded in real-world practice.

The students’ collective research will focus on the real-world decisions made by built environment professionals, examining how these can help—or hinder—efforts to address the climate and biodiversity emergencies, improve safety and accessibility, and create more inclusive communities. With the built environment responsible for up to 40% of global carbon emissions, the research will aim to specifically look at how built environment professionals can: 

• Help meet the UN’s sustainable development goals, and the UK government’s commitments on net zero, and biodiversity net gain
• Exceed minimum standards in life, health and fire safety to ensure healthier populations
• Design places that are inclusive, accessible, and support biodiversity.

Dr Emma Rowden, Lead of AD[A]PT and Postgraduate Research Tutor for Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, said: “Our built environment has a profound impact on human and planetary health. This exciting collaboration, involving many of the sector’s most influential bodies, will empower arts and humanities-led researchers to tackle the systemic issues stopping us from routinely building healthier, more inclusive, and sustainable environments. 

“We are thrilled to be working with our partners to train the next generation of industry-facing arts, humanities and design-based doctoral researchers.”

Oliver Urquhart-Irvine, Executive Director, Architecture Programmes and Collections, RIBA, said of the success of the collaboration: “This award is really fantastic news in every respect: scale, ambition, partners and value.”

Recruitment for the studentships is expected to begin in October 2025, with the first cohort interviews likely to take place in early summer 2026.