Wellcome widens its humanities and social sciences brief

The Wellcome Trust has boosted its annual funding for humanities and the social sciences by £5 million, while opening up the opportunities to more researchers.

This takes the total amount available for the trust’s revamped Medical Humanities, Society and Ethics and Research Resources programmes to £18.5m a year. The programmes have been given a wider reach as part of the changes.

Nils Fietje, medical humanities adviser at Wellcome, says the changes, announced on 22 May, have been “on a trajectory” rather than being a sudden move.