Catherine Cookson Foundation

Catherine Cookson Foundation

The Catherine Cookson Foundation was established by the generosity of the late Dame Catherine Cookson (1906-1998) to support ‘research and other academic activities within the University’ It has been able to make a valuable and distinctive contribution through a wide variety of awards. Please see the CCF LIST OF AWARDS 2019 - 2024.pdf for examples of the type of projects that have already been supported.

Dame Catherine is one of the most successful and widely-read British novelists, writing over 100 titles in a career that spanned half a century. Many were historical novels, often set in the North East of England; several drew on her own experiences as a young person living in deprived circumstances in South Tyneside. She suffered from ill-health throughout her life having a serious hereditary blood disease, for which she received treatment from colleagues at the University.

Requirements and Criteria

Applications must normally be:

submitted by a current student of member of staff of Newcastle University;
requesting funding from the Foundation of between £500 and £5000;
for one-off projects, not seeking recurrent funding.

Proposals funded by the Catherine Cookson Foundation will normally be expected to meet one or more of the following criteria. The extent to which they meet or exceed these criteria will inform the assessment process:

of benefit to current and/or future students at Newcastle University;
of benefit to the people of the North East of England;

involving activities, topics and issues of the type in which Dame Catherine Cookson herself might have had an interest, including:
- health and wellbeing
- education
- children and young people
- addressing poverty and hardship
- creativity
- working with partner organisations in the North East, including cultural organisations, voluntary sector organisations and charities, businesses, policy-makers, etc.

should have no obvious alternative source of support.

Grants from the Foundation are not intended to fund the following:

Student tuition fees;
Research projects where funding could be expected to be available elsewhere, either internally within the University or externally (such as from UKRI, European Union research programmes, major trusts and foundations, etc.). For the avoidance of doubt, small research projects and requests for seed-corn or pilot funding are acceptable.
Funding salary or ‘buy-out’ of the applicant’s time, if they are on a standard open-ended University contract.

It is also a condition of any grant that a final report on the project is submitted after its conclusion to the Assessment Panel. This should be in the form of an A4 document, no more than two pages in length, listing original objectives and to what extent they have been met, together with a statement of how much funding was received from the Foundation and how it was spent.

Interested in applying?

CCF Application Form 2026.docx

Completed forms must be submitted to sarah.carey@ncl.ac.uk, they should be a single pdf document (combining application form, supporting statement and cv, if appropriate, into one email attachment please). Please note that your School or Institute Research Administrator requires sight of your application in advance of submission.

The closing date for applications is 5pm, Tue 25 August 2026.

Applications will be assessed by a panel comprising a Chair, representatives from each Faculty, plus appointees of Senate and Council, NUSU and Catherine Cookson’s Executors. The panel will convene in mid/late August, with results communicated shortly after. Spend should be confined to the financial year 2026-27 (1 August to 31 July).