Applications open for doctoral research on the Society’s Collections
Are you interested in undertaking in-depth research using the Society’s Collections?
Applications are now open for another four PhD studentships, as part of our Collaborative Doctoral Awards programme. The projects will start in autumn 2025 and the deadline for applications is in January.
Project 1: Making geography matter
The first of the four projects, titled Making geography matter: opening up the Doreen Massey archive, is an Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP-funded Doctoral Training Partnership and will support PhD research at The Open University, in partnership with the Society.
The project will draw on geographer, public speaker and activist Doreen Massey’s unpublished archive, which is held at the Society and contains extensive documentary, audio and visual materials such as unpublished conference papers, preparatory notes for manuscripts, draft policy papers, transcripts from BBC broadcasts, and more.
The deadline is 7 January 2025.
Project 2: Conferencing British geography
The second, Conferencing British geography: disciplinary history told through annual conferences (1949-2029) and their archives, is funded by the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership and will support PhD research at the University of Nottingham, in partnership with the Society.
This project will provide a new history of post-WWII British geography, constructed through studying the lived experience and academic atmosphere of the annual conferences of the Society.
The student will have unrivalled access to the Society’s archives and will also be embedded in the team which organises the annual conferences today.
The deadline is 13 January 2025.
Project 3: Editing empire
The third, Editing empire: The Hakluyt Society in (post-) imperial Britain, 1846-present, is funded by the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership and will support PhD research at the University of Warwick, in partnership with the Society.
The project will investigate the Hakluyt Society who published hundreds of travel accounts mostly of European colonial discovery, exploring how these sources and their editorial framing impacted the understanding of travel and travel writing during the expansion, and break up, of the British Empire.
The Hakluyt Society has never been studied in relation to British imperial culture and its public legacies, until now.
The deadline is 13 January 2025.
Project 4: Ethnographies of border mapping
The fourth project, Ethnographies of border mapping: retracing the field through the geographical archive, is a Norther Bridge AHRC DTP-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award and will support PhD research at Durham University, in partnership with the Society.
The researcher will draw on border expertise at Durham’s Centre for Borders Research and expertise in the history of cartography at Queen’s Belfast to analyse archival data from when the Royal Geographical Society’s was a leader in boundary delimitation (ca 19th-early 20th centuries).
The researcher will produce insights on relations between cartographic and other knowledge systems, how boundary maps are produced through processes that articulate across a range of media, and how the intersection of maps, knowledge, and media are mobilised to construct ideals of state territory amidst the practicalities of political bordering.
The deadline is 15 January 2025.
We encourage the widest range of applicants for these studentships and are committed to welcoming those from different backgrounds and non-standard pathways.
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