The Empowered team are delighted to be working in partnership with the Open University to offer a studentship to research Empowered Carers.

This fully-funded studentship is available from October 2025. Further details about the value of an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP award are available on the DTP’s studentships page.  Stipend: Approximately £19,237 per annum for 3 years and 3 months for full time (6 years 6 months for part-time).  Closing date: 7th January 2025, midday UK time. 

The studentship is a partnership between The Open University and Age UK Salford. The proposed studentship will broadly address how services interventions can most effectively build and sustain the emotional resilience and well-being of family caregivers of people with dementia living in Salford. It offers a unique opportunity to explore Age UK Salford’s Empowered Carers programme for family caregivers of people living with dementia, identify caregivers’ unmet needs, and inform the development of the programme in collaboration with diverse stakeholders.

Applicants have the opportunity to shape their project and we welcome innovative, well-designed research proposals that broadly fit the overall brief. The successful applicant will be able to shape their research project across the different stages of the research process.

Potential projects could include:

  • Family carers’ experiences of caring for people living with dementia
  • How family carers balance their own needs with those of people with dementia they are caring for
  • Factors determining family carers’ resilience when caring for people living with dementia
  • The effectiveness and impacts of services interventions to support family caregivers of people living with dementia

All creative research methods in arts and humanities and social sciences that can elicit insights into family carers’ lived experience and responses to transitions in caring for and communication with people living with dementia will be considered. These include arts-based research methods such as visual experience mapping tools, storytelling, photo-elicitation and photography.  Proposals using comparative methods are welcomed.

For more information – Empowering families affected by dementia: building emotional resilience and supporting the health and well-being of family caregivers | Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership