The Cohort Development Fund (CDF) is designed to fund groups of students and to support training, development and research activities for the cohort of DTP students and to include Arts and Humanities students outside the DTP wherever possible.

The fund supports activity that enriches the Midlands4Cities community as a whole. 

Activities supported by the CDF can range in scale from student-led disciplinary and interdisciplinary research activities to training and development activities that cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries and that enable students to work together on group projects of common interest to arts and humanities postgraduate researchers.