Information for prospective students
If you are a prospective student, learn more about how you can apply for a Collaborative Doctoral Award studentship and PhD Studentships available.
How to apply
As a prospective student, you have two routes to applying for a Collaborative Doctoral Award studentship.
Reach out to a potential academic supervisor
If you have an idea for a project, do consider reaching out to a potential academic supervisor (at your own institution or elsewhere) to discuss funding opportunities and whether they might be available to supervise you.
You can also check the websites of Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDPs), like the one we are part of via the Science Museums and Archives Consortium, and of universities with AHRC Landscape Awards, for current opportunities.
Do bear in mind that Collaborative Doctoral Awards are expected to have a substantive focus on the collections and/or activities of the partner non-academic institution, and to contribute in some way to the institution's goals.
You may also find our general guidance on choosing a PhD helpful.
Apply to advertised CDA studentships
You can apply to advertised CDA studentships when these are available. These will have been developed by the prospective supervisors and funding obtained.
As well as checking this page regularly for opportunities, do check the websites of other partner organisations, CDPs, and HEIs with Landscape Awards.
We will advertise any current funded CDA studentships with the Society here when they are open for applications.
Current opportunities
Applications are now open for a studentship to start in autumn 2026.
Project title: Collaborative Research as Pedagogical Method: Reinterpreting Photographic Collections at the RGS-IBG
The Society holds hundreds of thousands of colonial era photographic images, which are largely underused. This Collaborative Doctoral Award brings together archival, visual, and material culture methods, including the practical challenges of working with living collections and will be centred around one of the Society’s most significant photographic collections: the work of Elizabeth Wilhelmina Ness (1881–1962).
Ness was an accomplished photographer who travelled extensively across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, and South and Central America. She was the first woman to travel Lake Kivu in Africa and later published an account of her travels, Ten Thousand Miles in Two Continents in 1929.
In 1930, she became the first woman to sit on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society and went on to serve as President of the National Council of Women of Great Britain during the Second World War.
The chosen doctoral researcher will use Ness’s material to develop an innovative and critical investigation of this photographic heritage—one that contains its fair share of unsettling insights—whilst bringing the archive into active dialogue with undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Westminster.
Ness’s images offer a rich opportunity to explore how colonial era photography can inform contemporary interdisciplinary teaching. Examining this collection from multiple perspectives will naturally grow more diverse narratives and support new understandings of colonial era records.
The deadline for applications is 30 April 2026.