Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships
Oxford's AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) began in 2016 and offers three or four fully funded doctoral studentships each year.
The scheme, which is led by Dan Hicks (Pitt Rivers Museum), operates across the six gardens, libraries and museums: the Ashmolean Museum, Bodleian Libraries, History of Science Museum, Museum of Natural History, Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum and the Pitt Rivers.
Each CDP studentship is jointly supervised in partnership between one or more of Oxford University museums and academics from UK Higher Education Institutions (HEI).
The partner HEI administers the studentship, receiving funds from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the student’s fees and maintenance in line with a standard AHRC award.
In addition to this full studentship award for fees and maintenance, Oxford University museums provide up to £2,000 per annum per student to cover the costs of travel between the HEI and Oxford, and related costs in carrying out research. Studentships can be based at any UK HEI apart from Oxford University.
The Collaborative Doctoral Partnership training grants will involve research that helps us to develop new perspectives on our collections and to share knowledge more widely and effectively with a range of audiences, while also training a new generation of scholars working between the academic and heritage sectors.
Oxford University Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM) are delighted to announce four new studentship opportunities for 2020 in partnership with University of Bristol, Queen Mary University of London, Birkbeck and the School of Advanced Study. Full details of the studentships on offer will be included below (will be updated). We want to encourage the widest range of potential students to study for a CDP studentship and are committed to welcoming students from different backgrounds to apply for our studentships.
The studentships are funded for 3 years and 9 months (45 months) full-time or part-time equivalent. The studentship has the possibility of being extended for 3 months to more provide professional development opportunities, or up to 3 months of funding be used to pay for the costs the student might incur in taking up professional development opportunities.
For general enquiries about Oxford University GLAM Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships please contact Dr Harriet Warburton, GLAM Research and Impact Manager, at harriet.warburton@glam.ox.ac.uk. For enquiries about specific projects please contact the project supervisors as detailed.
The Duchess of Botany: Mary Somerset, Jacob Bobart, and the Formation of the Oxford Botanic Garden
Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum (OBGA) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded doctoral grant from October 2020. The studentship directly complements attention to OBGA’s heritage in preparation for celebrating the Botanic Garden’s 400th anniversary in 2021 by exploring key aspects of its early history. Research will examine the material and intellectual networks that supported the development of its plant collections and institutional structures during the later seventeenth century, with a particular focus on two intriguing figures: the elite female botanical collector, Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort; and the Botanic Garden’s second superintendent, Jacob Bobart the younger.
This studentship will begin on 1 October 2020 and will be jointly supervised by Professor Simon Hiscock (OBGA) and Dr Richard Coulton (QMUL).
For full details of the studentship, including further particulars and how to apply, please follow the link to the advert on the QMUL website.
Informal enquiries relating to the project can be directed to Dr Richard Coulton at r.x.coulton@qmul.ac.uk.
Application deadline: 5pm on Wednesday 11 March, 2020
Interview date: Friday 3 April, 2020
Biocultural knowledge, power and poetics in South American featherwork
Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded doctoral grant from October 2020. The focus of this doctoral project is on South American featherwork in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) collections. While visitors gazing at the featherwork displays in the PRM might marvel at the sheer variety of objects’ forms, sizes and colours, the multitude of links between particular artefacts, peoples and places remain hidden; visitors are unable to discern and trace specific object histories, meanings and geographies. Exploring South American featherwork in the PRM collections, this interdisciplinary, practice-based doctoral project will seek to develop ways of telling histories of specific objects that shed light not only on the historical processes of collection in the field and the ‘lives’ of the objects in the museum, but also on contemporary debates on Indigenous cultural identity, sovereignty and heritage rights, as well as the dynamic relationships among Indigenous peoples, birds, and environments. This pioneering interdisciplinary project aims to provide understanding of these feathered objects as historical biocultural objects, which afford ways of telling the histories in which biodiversity emerges.
This studentship will begin on 1 October 2020 and will be jointly supervised by Dr Laura Van Broekhoven (Pitt Rivers Museum) and Professor Luciana Martins (Birkbeck, University of London).
For full details of the studentship, including further particulars and how to apply, please follow the link to the advert on the Birkbeck website.
Informal enquiries relating to the project can be directed to Professor Luciana Martins at l.martins@bbk.ac.uk.
Closing date for applications: 13 March 2020
Deadline by which all references must be submitted: 18 March 2020
Interview date: 27 March 2020
