Five funded PhD studentships announced
Posted 22 July, 2019
L-r: Assoc. Prof. Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Assoc. Prof. Siofra Pierse, Assoc. Prof. Rebecca Stephenson, Dr Jennifer Keating, Assoc. Prof. Jane Grogan
April 01, 2019
The College of Arts and Humanities at University College Dublin is pleased to announce 5 generously funded PhD studentships, one for each of the projects detailed below. The award includes a stipend of €15,000 per annum (for four years), full fee waivers (EU and non-EU), and a travel allowance. In order to apply, please submit a cover letter, CV, writing sample, 2 letters of reference, and a proposal (1000-1500 words plus indicative bibliography) via email to the supervisor of the relevant project by 30th April 2019. Applications will be reviewed by a committee at School level, and successful applicants will be informed by the end of May, at which time they may formally apply for admission to UCD. All awards will commence in September 2019.
Details of the five projects and contacts are:
1. PhD scholarship: Poverty, Welfare, and Visual Culture in the Long 19th Century
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Emily Mark Fitzgerald, UCD School of Art History and Cultural Policy
2. PhD scholarship: Early Modern Mobilities
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Jane Grogan, UCD School of English, Drama and Film
3. PhD scholarship: Writing Poetry in the Stars: Intersections of Science and Literature in Early Anglo-Saxon England
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Rebecca Stephenson, UCD School of English, Drama and Film
4. PhD Scholarship: Resource regimes in late imperial and early Soviet Russia
Contact: Dr Jennifer Keating, UCD School of History
5. PhD Scholarship: Identity at Play in 18th-century French Female-Authored Drama
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Siofra Pierse, UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Please read below for more detailed information.
School of Art History and Cultural Policy
PhD scholarship: Poverty, Welfare, and Visual Culture in the Long 19th Century
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Emily Mark-Fitzgerald
(opens in a new window)Research Profile
Applications are welcome for a generous four year, fully-funded PhD fellowship, based in UCD’s School of Art History and Cultural Policy. The award includes a stipend of €15,000 per annum, full fee waiver (EU or non-EU), a travel allowance, archival research and publication allowance, and funding for a laptop.
Candidates are encouraged to submit a proposal on a subject of their choosing, within the broad theme of poverty, visual culture, mass media, and the emergence of the modern welfare state from the 19th-early 20th century. The research should address how audiences began to ‘see’ poverty in entirely new ways during the long 19th century, in part due to the invention of photography and the expansion of mass media throughout Europe, empire, and the diaspora. It is anticipated the PhD project will be situated within some of the following themes:
- The rapid and coterminous development of the illustrated press, photography, stereoscopy, magic lanterns, optical devices, and early cinema as new forms of visualisation and encounter
- Discourses concerning representations of the ‘real’, the conditions of modern life, and physical/optical perception; debates on the nature of photography and new media and their relationship to verisimilitude and truth; etc.
- Moral, political, and economic philosophies which informed the transition from 19th c. poor laws and methods of public relief to the establishment of 20th c. modern welfare states and the non-governmental sector
Research proposals may also choose to address one or more of the following themes (or similar):
- homelessness (urban and rural)
- hunger (both severe and episodic)
- migration and diaspora
- benevolence (eg the rise of of modern non-governmental philanthropic organisations and activism)
- welfare institutions (eg the development of state-controlled instruments of relief)
- representations of empire
Candidates are invited to submit a research proposal that falls within the broad parameters outlined above. Irish, European, or comparative projects are especially encouraged, but any colonial or global topic is welcome. Demonstrable experience working with visual media is required.
The successful candidate will have a strong academic background in art history, visual culture, and/or history, and will work under the supervision of Associate Professor Emily Mark-FitzGerald. Dr Mark-FitzGerald is the primary expert on the visual culture of the Irish Famine from the 19th century-present; a former Director of the Irish Museums Association (2009-18); and current co-PI of the funded research series Media, Encounter, Witness: Troubling Pasts at the Humanities Institute at UCD. UCD’s School of Art History and Cultural Policy is the largest art history department in Ireland, and the successful candidate will join a thriving research community closely connected with a range of national and international museums and cultural institutions.
In order to apply, please submit a cover letter, CV, writing sample, two letters of reference, and a proposal (1000-1500 words plus indicative bibliography) via email to Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald (emily.mark@ucd.ie) by 30th April 2019. Applications will be reviewed by a committee at School level, and applicants will be informed by the end of May, at which time the successful applicant may formally apply for admission to UCD. Preliminary enquiries by email are welcome.
School of English, Drama & Film
PhD scholarship: Early Modern Mobilities
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Jane Grogan
(opens in a new window)Research Profile
The UCD School of English, Drama and Film invites applications for a generous four-year, fully-funded PhD scholarship. The award includes a stipend of €15,000 per annum, full fee waiver (EU or non-EU), and a travel allowance for archival research.
‘Early Modern Mobilities’ addresses the intersection of translation, travel and classical reception in the early modern period. Research on both travel writing and translation has taken exciting new directions in recent years, while the traffic of various kinds between east and west is increasingly well documented, and the rise of global Renaissance studies has expanded the literary geography and reach of the English Renaissance. Similarly, scholarly understanding of the classical world known to early modern readers and writers is also expanding and becoming more diverse; the work of ancient writers from (or of) Syria, Persia and north Africa have begun to be acknowledged as more than liminal or ‘Othered’ concerns to the business of Renaissance thinking.
This project seeks a suitably qualified, dedicated fulltime PhD student to bring a global Renaissance approach to the writers and writings of the English Renaissance, to study closely how books, authors and ideas travelled from east to west, and how the intersection of travel (or travel writing), translation and classical reception helped shape the cultural history of the period. Language skills (Latin, ancient Greek, Italian) and/or an interest in book history may be desirable, where relevant to the proposed project. Similarly, where a worthwhile opportunity exists to do so, the successful applicant may also be asked to collaborate with her/his supervisor to develop a new research resource in the area of her/his proposed project.
The successful candidate will have a background in English, or possibly Classics (with a special interest in reception), and will work under the supervision of Associate Professor Jane Grogan. Author of a monograph on The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549-1622 (2014), and another on the Tudor poet Edmund Spenser, her forthcoming publications include an edition of the first English translation of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, and an edited collection of interdisciplinary essays on the ancient near east in early modern Europe (OUP). The UCD School of English, Drama and Film has been ranked in the top 50 English departments in the world in the recent QS rankings, and boasts a very research-active group of early modernists, and a lively research culture both in the School, the Humanities Institute and University more generally. The successful candidate will be will served with local research resources at UCD and in the rare books libraries and collections in the Dublin area.
To apply, please submit a cover letter, CV, writing sample, two letters of reference, and a project proposal (1000-1500 words, plus indicative bibliography) via email to Assoc. Prof. Jane Grogan (jane.grogan@ucd.ie) by 30th April 2019. Applications will be reviewed by a committee at School level, and applicants will be informed as to the outcome of the competition by the end of May, at which time the successful applicant may formally apply for admission to UCD.
PhD scholarship: Writing Poetry in the Stars: Intersections of Science and Literature in Early Anglo-Saxon England
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Rebecca Stephenson
(opens in a new window)Research Profile
The UCD School of English, Drama and Film invites applications for a generous four-year, fully-funded PhD scholarship. The award includes a stipend of €15,000 per annum, full fee waiver (EU or non-EU), and a travel allowance for archival research.
The monks who copied and composed poetry and literary prose in early medieval England were first trained in scientific and numerical foreign to modern readers. This project seeks to recover that scientific knowledge in order to better understand how Anglo-Saxons conceptualized their cosmos, timekeeping, and the practice of medicine. This work goes further than interpretation of literary texts and considers how scientific writing is not an esoteric branch of knowledge by a recherché elite, but rather a specific body of information that was informed by the politics of the era at the same time that it participated in producing and replicating those political structures.
In particular, the PhD thesis will focus on how the early medieval calculation of time affects and impacts the creation of poetry and literary prose. The medieval method for calculating time differs radically from our own, from the hours of the day to the movable feasts that punctuate medieval life. In addition, the narrative mode of Old English poetry tends to follow a surprising conception of time, freely shifting from the past to the present more similar to writing of Virginia Woolf than to that of Charles Dickens. This project would work closely with medieval computistical and calendrical material in order to elucidate Old English poetry and literary prose.
Goals of the thesis:
- Cataloging and transcribing of 10th and 11th century Anglo-Saxon scientific texts that relate to computus or prognostics
- Creation of a database of these scientific texts
- Sketching lines of influence between scientific texts and Old English literature
- Establishing the relationship between the production of scientific knowledge and the current historical and political situation
Within these broader goals, the applicant will have significant leeway to develop their own project that integrates both science and literature. Proposals that concern apocalypse, the natural world, and/or medieval medicine would be particularly welcome.
The successful candidate should have a background in English (or equivalent interdisciplinary subject) and a reading knowledge of Old English and Latin. Experience with transcription of tenth and eleventh-century English manuscripts is desirable, but not required. The applicant will work under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Rebecca Stephenson who is an expert on the literature of the late tenth-century monastic reform and author of Politics of Language: Ælfric, Byrhtferth, and the Multilingual Identity of the Monastic Reform. She is currently working on a monograph on scientific writing and apocalyptic thinking in the late Anglo-Saxon period. The School of English, Drama, and Film is ranked among the top 50 English departments in the world according to QS rankings and has a long history of prestigious scholars who study the Middle Ages. The Scholarship also provides a budget to host an international conference on Early Medieval Science.
To apply, please submit a cover letter, CV, writing sample, two letters of reference, and a project proposal (1000-1500 words, plus indicative bibliography) via email to Assoc. Prof. Rebecca Stephenson (rebecca.stephenson@ucd.ie) by 30th April 2019. Applications will be reviewed by a committee at School level, and applicants will be informed as to the outcome of the competition by the end of May, at which time the successful applicant may formally apply for admission to UCD.
School of History
PhD Scholarship: Resource regimes in late imperial and early Soviet Russia
Contact: Dr Jennifer Keating
(opens in a new window)Research Profile
The UCD School of History invites applications for a generous four-year, fully-funded PhD scholarship. The award includes a stipend of €15,000 per annum, full fee waiver (EU or non-EU), and a travel allowance for archival research.
‘Resource regimes in late imperial and early Soviet Russia’ explores the social, political and environmental history of the Russian empire at a critical juncture in the history of the modern Russian state: the transition to a fully industrialised society at the turn of the twentieth century, and the collapse of the Romanov dynasty.
As a geographically vast empire with huge but hitherto predominantly untapped reserves of resources, Russia industrialised late in the day compared to other European powers, resulting in a period of rapid and intense economic growth fuelled by resource development, state sponsorship and post-emancipation population growth and mobility. The proposed PhD research focuses on the location, extraction and exploitation of resources across the empire, with particular emphasis on imperial zones beyond the Russian heartland. It considers the ways in which materials were used by the state to reinforce imperial rule and hierarchies of power in borderland areas, and subsequently, the role that these resources (their preservation, exploitation, cultural significance and so forth) played in the collapse of the empire and the emergence of the Soviet state into the early 1920s, in turn adding an ecological dimension to the history of imperial disintegration and civil war.
This PhD scholarship will explore the dynamic relationship between imperial/Soviet rule and material resources, focusing on three key areas:
- The ways in which state and society exploited resources at the edges of empire, and the various legal, economic, intellectual and material justifications for doing so.
- The environmental, social and political impact of resource exploitation, on local and imperial scales.
- Issues of resource access, security and related forms of violence during the First World War and the Russian Civil War.
There is considerable scope to develop this project according to the expertise and interests of the applicant. Candidates are encouraged to focus either on a specific region of the empire, or a type of resource (or both), the latter including, but not limited to energy resources, fossil fuels, mineral reserves, commodities, and over-land trade routes.
The successful candidate will have a background in history, excellent reading knowledge of Russian, and will work under the supervision of Dr Jennifer Keating. An expert in Russian environmental and imperial history, Keating’s forthcoming monograph on political ecologies of empire in tsarist Central Asia will be published by Oxford University Press. The UCD School of History is home to the largest group of historians in Ireland and has been ranked within the top 100 history departments in the world in the recent QS rankings. It has particular strengths in late nineteenth and twentieth century European, imperial and global history.
To apply, please submit a cover letter, CV, writing sample, two letters of reference, and a project proposal (1000-1500 words, plus indicative bibliography) via email to Dr Jennifer Keating (jennifer.keating@ucd.ie) by 30th April 2019. Applications will be reviewed by a committee at School level, and applicants will be informed as to the outcome of the competition by the end of May, at which time the successful applicant may formally apply for admission to UCD.
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
PhD Scholarship: Identity at Play in 18th-century French Female-Authored Drama
Contact: Assoc. Prof. Siofra Pierse
(opens in a new window)Research Profile
UCD School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics invites applications to a four-year long fully-funded PhD fellowship in 18th-century French and Francophone Studies. This award includes full fee waiver (EU and non-EU), a generous stipend of €15,000 per annum, and funds towards a new laptop, conference travel, research library visits and book purchases.
Candidates are invited to submit a proposal for a PhD project that will focus primarily on identity play within works by 18th-century French female authors (page or stage in the broadest senses, including both theatre and narrative). Preference may be given to thesis projects that consider proto-feminism and identity, gender metamorphosis, gender and identity play, stereotype reversal, female rôles in female-authored drama by comparison with male-authored works, or projects that assess the nature or impact of early-modern plays, novels, or performances as critiques or explorations of the restrictions imposed on the female space, rôle, voice, embodiment, identity, or potential. Candidates are also welcome to submit proposals for projects in closely related areas. Original approaches are particularly encouraged.
The successful candidate will be innovative and independent in her/his approach to research and must have already demonstrated research ability. The candidate must have fluent French and be available to lecture and tutor within the French and Francophone Studies section at UCD: the successful candidate will be expected to be resident at UCD throughout teaching terms for the entire duration of this four-year research scholarship. Prospective candidates will also collaborate on project websites, drama production, research resources, seminars and conference organisation.
The UCD PhD programme is a structured four-year programme. The successful candidate will work under the supervision of 18th-century French specialist Associate Professor Síofra Pierse. Dr Pierse has written extensively on Voltaire and 18th-century historiography and she is currently working on literary doubt across a range of 18th-century writings, including female-authored novels. Candidates will benefit from local research networks, including the School graduate student group, other College of Arts and Humanities PhD scholars, a research studies advisory panel, the French and Francophone Studies section, the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics community, and the UCD Humanities Institute. The School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics boasts a lively research culture and is host to a number of internationally renowned scholars in both Modern Languages and Linguistics. Modern Languages at UCD has been consistently ranked 51-100 in the world in QS rankings since 2012.
To apply, please submit a cover letter, a full CV, a writing sample, two confidential letters of reference, and a thesis project proposal (1000-1500 words, plus indicative bibliography) by email to Associate Professor Síofra Pierse (siofra.pierse@ucd.ie) by 30th April 2019. Applications will be reviewed by a School selection committee, and the successful applicant will then be invited to apply formally for admission to the SLCL PhD programme. Preliminary enquiries by email are very welcome.
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