Collaborative Doctoral Awards – student recruitment

Information Session

The information session for candidates will be held virtually, on Zoom, on 9 December 2024. Candidates can expect a briefing about the application process, tips for how to strengthen their application and an opportunity to ask questions from staff and recruiting project teams.

Information Session: 1pm – 2pm on Monday 9th December 2024 – Zoom link (Add to calendar (.ics file))

2025/26 Collaborative Doctoral Award Projects Recruiting

We are recruiting for the following Collaborative Doctoral Award Projects to start in October 2025:

• Classification, representation and marginalisation in “English” folk music and dance 

  Led by University College London in collaboration with the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

  CDA project description:  

  Folk music and dance collections can be both marginalised when compared to other performing arts and social practices, and also act as the marginalising force in their treatment of generally underrepresented groups. So, this study questions who is missing and hidden in English folk music/dance documentation, then asks how archival representation and knowledge organisation can be used/reimagined both to understand these marginalisation(s) and as part of a reparatory framework which attempts to resolve them. The first part examines how folk music/dance fit within existing classifications of music and dance, and the marginalisation of folk music/dance within these. The second part focuses on marginalised groups from Gypsy and Traveller, and immigrant communities. English folk music/dance collections relating to these groups will be mapped. Then, a case study of Gypsy and Traveller documents at the English Folk Dance and Song Society will be carried out, which seeks to understand how these works are indexed and classified, and then provide transformative classifications to enhance access to these documents. Finally, the gaps and silences of immigrant groups within English folk music/dance collections will be considered through the lens of archival representation and knowledge organisation. This study works across archival studies, knowledge organisation and the folk music and dance domains to understand this important area and, ultimately, to transform library and archival practices. 

  The term “Gypsy and Traveller” is used here to echo the terminology used by the English Folk Dance and Song Society, our project partner in this research, who use this terminology following careful consultation with relevant communities and academics. However, it is acknowledged that these terms are not necessarily how all community members would describe themselves. 

  CDA project team:  

  This project is a collaboration between the English Folk Dance and Song Society and the Department of Information Studies (DIS) at UCL. 

  • Primary academic supervisor: Dr Anna Sexton, Lecturer in Archives, Records Management and Information Governance (a.sexton.11@ucl.ac.uk) 
  • Second academic supervisor: Dr Deborah Lee, Lecturer in Library and Information Studies (deborah.lee@ucl.ac.uk)
  • Collaborative partner supervisor: The English Folk Dance and Song Society supervisor is Tiffany Hore, Library and Archives Director, The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (tiffany@efdss.org)

  Specific requirements:

  We are looking for applicants with an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject and a Master’s degree or equivalent professional experience. We welcome candidates with an interest in music and dance who have some experience, qualification or understanding of libraries and archives, demonstrated by, for example, use of libraries or archives in their previous research, a post-graduate qualification in library and information studies or archives and records management or relevant work experience in a library or archive. A particular enthusiasm for folk music and dance would be highly desirable. We particularly welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds, or those who could bring a community perspective to the research. 

• Death in the Suburbs: developing a new interdisciplinary methodology at Falerii Novi to study ancient funerary landscapes

  Led by School of Advanced Study in collaboration with British School at Rome.

  

  CDA project description 

  This project will systematically document and analyse for the first time in Italy an entire ancient funerary landscape at Falerii Novi spanning over 1000 years (ca. 500 BCE–700 CE). It develops and applies an interdisciplinary approach to studying funerary landscapes with wider scientific relevance, integrating archaeological, historical, computational and scientific analysis. The student will use, for example: photogrammetry to digitally document individual tombs and generate robust 3D digital records; GPS recording to document tomb locations and GIS and spatial analysis to interrogate landscape evolution and networks of movement; archival research to recontextualise material displaced by earlier archaeological interventions; and cutting-edge scientific techniques to study tomb material composition linked to resource exploitation, economic networks and sociocultural change. In this manner, the project will assess local evolutions in funerary practice and architecture, relationships to landscape and resource exploitation, and connectivity to roads and settlements over the longue durée, and therefore generate significant original research for Falerii Novi and other central Italian towns: remarkably, there has been little attempt to understand the town’s cemeteries as a whole and their chronology. 3D documentation and modelling will create high-resolution digital archives of a neglected ancient suburban landscape at a crucial point in time, sharing these with Italian cultural heritage agencies. Results will have broad national and international impact, encouraging new debate around how ancient communities thought about their past, planned for their future, and expressed themselves in the present, along with relationships between urbanism, death and sociocultural shifts (e.g. pagan to Christian). It is hoped that the methodology developed can be used as an engagement tool with other projects and activated at comparable archaeological sites with similarly extensive funerary landscapes. This project is set alongside ongoing excavations by the Falerii Novi Project, co-led by the partner institutions, and benefits from the opportunity to directly integrate intramural socioeconomic data, repairing traditional scholarship that sees death as separate from urbanism and the social and economic life of an ancient city.  

  CDA project team 

  • Primary academic supervisor: Dr Emlyn Dodd (Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London) – emlyn.dodd@sas.ac.uk 
  • Second academic supervisor: Dr Corinna Riva, secondary supervisor (Institute of Archaeology, University College London) – c.riva@ucl.ac.uk
  • Collaborative Partner supervisor: Dr Stephen Kay, partner supervisor (British School at Rome) – s.kay@bsrome.it

  Specific requirements:

  Essential 

  • Experience of archaeological fieldwork, whether in excavation, survey or otherwise. 

  • A prior degree in Archaeology. 

  • Willingness to spend periods of time abroad in Italy undertaking fieldwork and research, and to engage with heritage agencies and fieldwork teams. 

  Desirable 

  • Experience with GIS software, GPS equipment, photogrammetry or 3D modelling. 

  • Experience in Italian archaeology and related material culture, especially of the 1st millennium BCE to 1st millennium CE. 

  • Some knowledge of Italian language and/or the aspiration to further develop Italian speaking and reading skills 

  While it is not essential for applicants to have experience in the full range of methods and techniques proposed for this project, experience in some of them will be an asset. Training and professional development opportunities via the ICS and BSR will be available to up-skill in certain areas. 

• Integrating More-Than-Human Participation in Urban Planning to Enhance Sustainability and Social Cohesion in Social Housing Communities

  Led by Royal College of Art in collaboration with Peabody Community Foundation / Peabody Housing Association.

  Project details and requirements to follow shortly.

  CDA project team:

  • Primary academic supervisor: Dr Qian Sun, Head of Programme Service Design MA, Royal College of Art (qian.sun@rca.ac.uk)
  • Second academic supervisor: Dr Alessio Franconi, Tutor (Research), Royal College of Art (alessio.franconi@rca.ac.uk)
  • Collaborative Partner supervisor: Sahil Khan, Director of Community Strategy, Partnerships & Funding, Peabody Housing (sahil.khan@peabody.org.uk)
• The Mount Street Catalogues: Reconstructing a Nineteenth-Century Jesuit Library

  Led by School of Advanced Study in collaboration with British Jesuit Archives.

  

  CDA project description: 

  This collaborative project aims to reconstruct and recontextualize the Jesuit Antiquarian Book Collection at 114 Mount Street, London, highlighting its historical, cultural, and global significance. Established in the mid-nineteenth century, the Mount Street library, which is now preserved by the British Jesuit Archives, originally boasted a diverse array of books across literature, history, poetry, and theology. However, significant portions of this collection were deaccessioned, particularly in the late 1990s, leading to a focus primarily on theology and Jesuit history. This project leverages two nineteenth century manuscript catalogues—dating from the 1850s and 1890s respectively—as well as a rich and under-researched archive of letters and personal papers related to the provenance, dispersal, and sale of Mount Street’s books, in order to reconstruct the original scope of the library, to better understand the evolving nature of Jesuit collection policies in England, the provenance of some of their books, as well as the ways in which knowledges have been organised at 114 Mount Street.  

  Project outputs can take the form of an academic thesis; however, we encourage proposals that develop creative outputs, including the production of online or physical exhibitions, as well as digital resources.  

  For more information about the collaborative project, please contact Dr Michael Durrant (michael.durrant@sas.ac.uk) and Dr Lucy Vinton (lvinten@jesuit.org.uk).    

  CDA project team:

  • Primary Academic Supervisor: Dr Michael Durrant (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
  • Secondary Academic Supervisor: Professor Laura Cleaver (School of Advanced Study, University of London)
  • Collaborative Partner Supervisor: Dr Lucy Vinten (British Jesuit Archives) 

  Specific requirements:

  Applicants should have a good degree in a relevant discipline and a Masters-level qualification or equivalent which meets AHRC requirements. We encourage applicants with relevant work/professional experience to apply, as well as applicants from under-represented groups, including: people with hidden or visible disabilities; Black, Asian and Global Majority; first-generation university-educated; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT+); lower income families and mature students. 

• Translating Monstrosity: Constructions of Difference in Early Modern England and France

  Led by University College London in collaboration with Wellcome Collection.

  

   

  CDA project description: 

  Wellcome Collection holds a unique artefact, a luxury manuscript in French containing accounts of ‘prodigies’,‘monsters’ and ‘marvels’, presented to Elizabeth of England in 1559. The manuscript contains many images and descriptions of bodily, sexual and racial difference that were framed and adapted across cultural and linguistic borders in early modern Europe, and for which there was a large audience. Drawing on transnational histories of knowledge transfer, book history and disability studies, this project focuses on this manuscript, alongside immensely popular printed versions of the same text and other printed works containing images of ‘monstrosity’ and difference, especially English translations of French surgeon Ambroise Paré’s writings. It examines how bodily, racial and sexual difference were constructed in England between 1550 and 1700 and how French texts and images were adapted and reframed for English audiences. Drawing on Wellcome Collection’s rich holdings and early modern objects at UCL Special Collections, it will contribute to Wellcome’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion work and its programme to address problematic and discriminatory terminology in catalogue records of historic materials. The project will include opportunities to organise multidisciplinary workshops, engage in knowledge exchange with museum and library staff, and share findings with public audiences. 

  CDA project team:

  • Primary Supervisor: Dr Elaine Leong e.leong@ucl.ac.uk
  • Secondary Supervisor: Prof Jason Peacey j.peacey@ucl.ac.uk
  • Collaborative Partner supervisor: Elma Brenner E.Brenner@wellcome.org

   

  Specific requirements:

  Reading knowledge of French is desirable and willingness to gain reading proficiency in early modern French is essential. LAHP AHRC-funded students can apply to the LAHP Language Fund to support training costs.  

• Understanding ‘Place’ in Historical Botanical Collections: science, commerce, empire, and the early-modern herbarium

  Led by Queen Mary University of London in collaboration with the Natural History Museum.

  

  CDA project description:

  This CDA project brings together two concepts of botanical ‘place’ to enhance our understanding of early-modern herbarium collections. On the one hand, geolocating the incidence of biological species is a crucial component in the ongoing efforts of life scientists to understand global biodiversity and ecological change in the era of climate crisis. For contemporary botanists, ‘place’ data is a fundamental component of how scientists assess species diversity and distributions, plant persistence and migration, and the risk of local and global extinction events. In the humanities, ‘place’ has also been important for historians of science seeking to understand how early-modern Europeans acquired natural specimens and knowledge from across the known world. Indeed, the processes of globalisation via which early-modern merchants shipped people, wealth, commodities, and objects of nature around the planet are increasingly recognised as intrinsically connected with both the formation of European empires and the rise of industrial capitalism, two key precipitants of our contemporary climate crisis. 

  This project will specifically examine the spatial provenance of an extraordinary global plant collection, the ‘Sloane Herbarium’ at the Natural History Museum (NHM), to ask:  

  • What ‘place’ data is recorded for botanical specimens in the Sloane Herbarium (compiled between 1680–1753)? How and where is it recorded? What archival and methodological challenges does it present for twenty-first century researchers?  

  • How did early-modern botanists understand the significance of ‘place’ for organising collections of plant specimens? Do such place-concepts relate to modern understandings of phytogeography and biodiversity?  

  • How tractable is early-modern botanical place information as the source of georeferencing data? What advantages and risks are inherent in leveraging such data?  

  • What more can a study of how place functions in the collection teach us about the global dimensions of the Sloane Herbarium, not least in connection to economies of commerce, enslavement, and empire?  

  Our project will find focus through the herbarium of James Petiver (c.1663–1718), an apothecary of the middling sort and Fellow of the Royal Society in early-modern London. Petiver’s is at once the most sizeable individual component of the Sloane Herbarium and globally the most diverse, his specimens stretching from the Philippines to Newfoundland. What sets Petiver apart is that his plants are also the best documented in terms of provenance. Capturing, decoding, and contextualising the detail of this provenance information – as a record both of early-modern species distribution and of historical accumulation – will be central to the project’s interrogation of the place of ‘place’ in the disciplinary formation of botany as commercial, scientific, and imperial technology. A core research task will be to structure and populate an historical collections dataset that catalogues Petiver’s plants and their provenance, and is integrated with existing information management frameworks at NHM. 

  The studentship incorporates a range of disciplinary perspectives including the history of natural history; history of collections; archival research; environmental / plant humanities; digital humanities; global history. The successful candidate will join the PhD cohorts at both NHM and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at QMUL. 

  For further information about the Sloane Herbarium, begin with: https://data.nhm.ac.uk/dataset/sloane-herbarium-inventory 

  CDA project team:

  • Primary academic supervisor: Dr Richard Coulton, Reader in Eighteenth-Century Studies and Digital Humanities (QMUL)
  • Second academic supervisor: Prof Miles Ogborn, Professor of Geography (QMUL) 
  • Collaborative partner supervisor and lead contact: Dr Mark Carine, Principal Curator in Charge (Algae, Fungi and Plants Division) (NHM) 
  • Additional partner supervisor: Dr Neil Brummitt, Senior Researcher (Algae, Fungi and Plants Division) (NHM) 

  Specific requirements:

  • Applicants must evidence demonstrable interest in the history of collections, history of science, historical geography, and/or working with historical natural history collections. With this in mind, applicants may be drawn from a range of formal disciplinary backgrounds across the humanities and life sciences. 

  • The successful applicant will clearly explain the relationship between their education / experience and the topic of the award, and indicate how their present research interests relate to the proposed project. 

  • Some experience of handling natural history collections, conducting archival research, and/or conducting botanical research will be of benefit to applicants. 

  • Candidates will normally hold (or expect to receive before October 2025) a Masters degree. Equally, we recognise that research students can approach a doctorate via various routes. Doctoral applicants who have not completed a Masters degree are eligible to apply providing they can demonstrate equivalent experience that has prepared them for doctoral research. For this studentship, equivalent experience might include, but is not restricted to, a strong track-record of employment in a museum, botanic garden, or heritage institution, that includes responsibility for relevant archival research, collections curation, and/or public engagement activity. 

  • For further information about the project or to request an informal conversation about the application process, please contact Richard Coulton (r.x.coulton@qmul.ac.uk) and Mark Carine (m.carine@nhm.ac.uk). 

Timeline

Please also check our FAQs page before you submit your application.

The list of CDA studentships funded by LAHP since 2018 is available here

Our Collaborative Doctoral Award Case Studies are available here