Collaborative doctoral studentships

About GLAM's collaborative doctoral research

GLAM staff co-supervise a range of collaborative doctoral studentships funded through major schemes, including those of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). See below for details of past and present projects.

Each collaborative doctoral studentship is jointly supervised in partnership between one or more of our GLAM institutions and academics from UK Higher Education Institutions (HEI).

Oxford GLAM's AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) began in October 2016 with studentships open to the Ashmolean Museum, History of Science Museum, Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum (CDP 2). From 2020 the programme widened to allow studentships to be supervised by staff from Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum, and the Bodleian Libraries (CDP 3).

For general enquiries about Oxford University GLAM collaborative doctoral awards please contact Dr Harriet Warburton (harriet.warburton@glam.ox.ac.uk).

For enquiries about specific projects please contact the project supervisors named below.

Apply to co-supervise a collaborative doctoral project

Collaborative doctoral projects have been transformational for GLAM. They are producing research that helps us to develop new perspectives on our collections and they are helping to train a new generation of scholars working between the academic and heritage sectors.

GLAM is very keen to continue to co-supervise collaborative doctoral studentship projects and we strongly encourage GLAM colleagues to apply to the many collaborative doctoral studentship schemes on offer.

Please note this is not a call for proposals directly from students. If you are a potential collaborative doctoral student then studentships are often advertised on jobs.ac.uk and on host higher education institutions’ websites.

Expand All

  1. Check scheme deadlines: Deadlines for proposals are variable so please check scheme webpages for latest information and deadlines.
  2. Check your eligibility: Eligibility for each scheme is slightly different, therefore you should check the scheme notes carefully. GLAM will usually be the non-HEI collaborating partner on the project or can be secondary supervisor if working with an Oxford University Academic Division (because GLAM can’t matriculate students). Contact the scheme administrator before applying to ensure your eligibility as a GLAM researcher.
  3. Co-develop the application with your HEI partner. You should ask the partner what their internal process is.
  4. Obtain GLAM internal approval: Before applying, you must liaise with your line manager to ensure that there is enough capacity and resource to be able to co-supervise the studentship (which will not bring any funds to your GLAM department but may require a financial contribution towards student research expenses).
  5. Secure financial contribution (if required): Depending on the scheme, the lead HEI usually administers the studentship, receiving funds for the student’s fees and maintenance. In addition to the full studentship award, GLAM departments may provide up to £2,000 per annum per student (pro rata) to cover the costs of travel between the HEI and Oxford, and related costs in carrying out research. You must liaise with your departmental Head of Finance and/or line manager to ensure that funds will be available if required.
  6. Get in touch with us: Contact the GLAM Research & Impact team (researchsupport@glam.ox.ac.uk) if you are thinking about applying to collaborate on a studentship project and would like support in your application, and/or if you have any questions about collaborative doctoral studentships more widely.

GLAM's collaborative doctoral student projects

Expand All

Name: Sharang Sharma
Topic: Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage
Dates: 2025-2029
Funder: AHRC Midlands4Cities Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Andrew Dunning and Dr Peter Toth, Bodleian Libraries
Partner university: University of Nottingham
University supervisors: Dr Henry Parkes and Dr Rob Lutton

This project studies two manuscripts from 12th-century substantial fragments of liturgical books called Breviaries to determine their provenance, using a combination of traditional and digital techniques. Beyond their generic 12th-century features, these sources lack any signs that could shed light on their specific origins and reveal the motivations behind their creation. In this project, the contents and appearance of the manuscripts are examined using concordance-detection techniques, scaled up using digital technologies, to ascertain not only the provenance of the sources, but also to fill in some gaps in the scholarly knowledge of Anglo-Norman liturgies of the 12th century. 

Name: Jemima Dunnett
Topic: Evaluating the Influence of Tangible 3D Printed Replicas on the Museum Experience
Dates: 2025-2029
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Janet Stott and Dr Duncan Murdock, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Partner university: University of Warwick
University supervisors: Professor Mark Williams and Dr Paula Wilson, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG)

This project will focus on the impact of tangible 3D printed replicas, models produced via the process of additive manufacturing, on the museum visitor experience. The primary purpose of this is to investigate the feasibility of employing such replicas in museums and how visitors interact with and learn from such objects. The project is jointly supervised by researchers in WMG at the University of Warwick and Oxford University Museum of Natural History and seeks to leverage user experience methods from industry to explore the use of tangible 3D printed replicas within museums. The main aims of the project are to understand how these replicas influence visitors’ interpretation of exhibits, shape their behavioural interactions within museum spaces, and contribute to the overall museum experience.

Name: Sophie Russell
Topic: Atlantic Stories, Colonial Legacies and the Bodleian, 1650-1800
Dates: 2025-2028
Funder: Coventry University QR fully-funded PhD Studentship
Oxford supervisors: Mike Webb and Dr Alexandra Franklin (Bodleian Libraries)
Partner university: Coventry University
University supervisors: Dr Alice Leonard and Professor Corinne Fowler 

This project investigates the Bodleian Libraries’ institutional and archival legacies regarding English transatlantic colonialism (1650–1800). Responding to the 'archival turn' and movements like Rhodes Must Fall, it interrogates how imperial power is preserved within collections.

Through specific case studies, the research examines what objects reveal about colonial activity and how historical finding aids have shaped - or silenced - narratives of empire. By analysing curatorial practices, the project addresses urgent calls for post-colonial justice, bringing to light the absences within the archive and the Library’s role in documenting and representing Britain’s imperial past.

Name: Elena Trowsdale
Topic: Meaningful measurement: Qualitative data methods & analysis for understanding real-world GLAM experiences
Dates: 2024-2028
Funder: Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award
Oxford supervisors: Dr Megan Gooch (Bodleian Libraries), Professor David De Roure (Engineering Science) and Helen Adams (GLAM Division)
Partner university: Open University
University supervisors: Dr Jaspal Singh and Dr Sally Hunt

This project explores qualitative analysis methods for public engagement measurement in Oxford University’s GLAM sector. Linguistic and other qualitative, data derived from public engagement initiatives or feedback in each of the six GLAM institutions associated with Oxford University, including the Bodleian and Ashmolean, will be analysed. This research will help to find an effective method of analysing qualitative data for these institutions, which will help these institutions in their aim to become more user-focused and data-driven.

Name: James McDermott
Topic: Using novel modelling approaches to investigate the evolution of symmetry in early animals
Dates: 2024-2028
Funder: London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership
Oxford supervisors: Dr Frankie Dunn, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Museum partner: Natural History Museum
Museum partner supervisors: Dr Imran Rahman
Partner university: University College London
University supervisors: Dr Ferdinand Marlétaz

This project investigates the evolution of symmetry in the earliest animals on Earth. This interdisciplinary project uses techniques from engineering to assess the ability of different extinct marine animal body plans to survive in their proposed habitats. He aims to uncover why different symmetry types evolved in animals and what this can tell us about the environment in which they lived.

Name: Lucy Jackson
Topic: Deciphering the Cambrian explosion of echinoderms
Dates: 2024-2027
Funder: University of Reading
Oxford supervisors: Dr Frankie Dunn, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Partner museum: Natural History Museum
Partner museum supervisors: Dr Imran Rahman and Dr Tim Ewin
Partner university: University of Reading
University supervisors: Dr Andrew Meade and Dr Chris Venditti

This project uses X-ray microtomography and new deep learning tools to characterise the three-dimensional morphology of key fossil taxa, including undescribed specimens from the Natural History Museum’s collections. This will form the basis for constructing a character matrix of extant and extinct echinoderms, incorporating morphological and molecular data, which will be analysed with state-of-the-art phylogenetic methods. The resulting phylogeny will be used to quantitatively investigate the rate and sequence of evolutionary change in Cambrian echinoderms. In addition, an extensive dataset characterizing the ecological and environmental parameters of early echinoderms will be assembled and interrogated to assess the possible causes of the Cambrian radiation of echinoderms. Ultimately, this will help uncover the pattern and process of the Cambrian explosion of animals more widely.

Name: Renée Trepagnier
Topic: Creating the first Europeans. Tracing the development of Sir Arthur Evans’s vision of Minoan civilisation through documents and objects
Dates: 2023-2027
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Andrew Shapland and Dr Eleanor Standley, Ashmolean Museum
Partner university: University of Bristol
University supervisors: Professor Nicoletta Momigliano and Dr Shelley Hales

This project focuses on the archaeological excavations, theories, and legacy of Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated and restored the Bronze Age (Minoan) architectural complex known as the Palace of Knossos on Crete from 1900-1930. In his publications, Evans used the evidence that he had gathered to present his vision of the Minoan civilisation as a proto-European society ruled by priest-kings. The Evans Archive and Ashmolean collections will be used to study the evolution of Evans’s theories from their archaeological context to their publication and exhibition to disentangle and distinguish Evans’s careful study of the archaeological contexts from his motivation to portray the Minoans as the first European civilisation.  

Name: Rose Karpinski
Topic: Rivers of Bronze in the age of Iron: an interdisciplinary study of Iron Age copper-alloy material culture from the middle-upper Thames Valley
Dates: 2023-2027
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Courtney Nimura and Dr Kelly Domoney, Ashmolean Museum
Partner university: University of Reading
University supervisors: Dr Peter Bray and Professor Duncan Garrow

This project offers new insights into the production and circulation of metalwork in the Thames Valley during the dynamic Iron Age. By bridging the knowledge gap between well-studied Bronze Age alloys and under-researched Iron Age metallurgy, the study uses an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeology and chemistry. Utilising cutting-edge scientific techniques on Ashmolean Museum collections, the research reveals complex histories of craft, recycling, and metallurgical choice. This integrated characterization approach generates new datasets and narratives, shedding light on changing social traditions. Ultimately, the work establishes improved methods for studying material culture and the evolving technological identities of Iron Age Britain.

Name: Amalia Wickstead
Topic: Decolonizing Collections: The Reception and Consumption of Classical casts in pedagogy in the British Empire
Dates: 2022-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Milena Melfi and Dr Shailendra Bhandare, Ashmolean Museum
Partner university: University College London (UCL)
University supervisors: Professor Phiroze Vasunia

This project looks at the connections between the British Empire’s mission and systems of pedagogy which prioritised Greco-Roman antiquity. Using the Ashmolean Museum’s large collection of plaster casts, the project will examine the import, dissemination, and role of an often-neglected category of museum objects. By positioning them within current debates on colonialism, imperialism, and nationalism, the study aims to contextualise the collection at the Ashmolean next to smaller, peer-collections in South Asia and other epicentres of British colonisation and to question their complicity in colonial histories.

Name: Jemima Bennett
Topic: Centring the marginal: Western medieval manuscript fragments in the Bodleian Library
Dates: 2022-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Matthew Holford and Nicole Gilroy, Bodleian Libraries
Partner university: University of Kent
University supervisors: Dr David Rundle and Dr Emily Guerry

This project investigates medieval manuscript fragments repurposed as parchment for late medieval bookbindings. Often cut up for use as endleaves, these fragments provide a window into historical bookbinding practices and contemporary attitudes toward recycling. By engaging with modern concepts of reuse, the research challenges the perception of fragments as 'incomplete' or 'lesser' versions of full manuscripts. Instead, it frames them as complete, valuable objects of study. Ultimately, the work aims to shift scholarly perspectives, demonstrating how these repurposed materials offer unique insights into the lifecycle of medieval books and the evolution of historical research collections.

Name: Anna Sephton
Topic: Other lives of the image: examining the meanings of an apartheid-era collection of photographs in South Africa today
Dates: 2021-2025
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Christopher Morton, Pitt Rivers Museum
Partner university: University of Brighton
University supervisors: Professor Darren Newbury and Dr Julia Winckler

This project examines how two deeply connected colonial and apartheid era photographic collections from South Africa, taken by Bryan Heseltine (1923-2008) and his aunt, Irene Heseltine (1892-unknown), are both a product of, and resistant to, the uniquely South African ‘colonial archive’. It will engage with the inheritance of colonial content and ways of thinking; the possibility of generating reflexive, ethically receptive and African-centric perspectives; the positionality of those behind the image and their ‘intrusion’ into meaning making; the relationship between identity and landscape; and the conflation of image documentation and truth-telling. This research will ultimately consider possible routes for repatriation, engaging in community-based fieldwork in South Africa aimed at collaborative storytelling and immersive, alternative exhibition spaces. 

Name: Shreya Gupta
Topic: Decolonizing collections: Investigating knowledge formation networks in colonial India with specific reference to numismatics
Dates: 2021-2025
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Shailen Bhandare, Ashmolean Museum
Partner university: University of Exeter
University supervisors: Professor Nandini Chatterjee and Professor Nicola Thomas

Read thesis: Gupta, S. (2026) Coins and colonialism between South Asia and Britain: tracing numismatic networks of collecting from field to museum. PhD thesis, University of Exeter

Name: Grace Exley
Topic: Coming Out of the Shadows: Women and Geology in Oxford, 1813-1914
Dates: 2021-2025
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Eliza Howlett and Professor Paul Smith, Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH)
Partner university: University of Leeds
University supervisors: Dr Jon Topham and Professor Graeme Gooday

This project explores the vital yet overlooked roles of women in nineteenth-century Oxford geology. While history often centres on figures like William Buckland and John Phillips, their work relied heavily on the 'invisible labour' of women like Mary Buckland and Anne Phillips. Using OUMNH archives and material collections, this research restores these women to visibility. By interrogating geological objects and contextualizing their public activities, the project examines shifting opportunities for women in the sciences. Comparing geology with botany and astronomy, it analyses the evolving identity of female practitioners across Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

Name: Hye Lim (Joy) Nam
Topic: Mental Models of the Organisation of Scholarly Information Across the Academy: Disciplinary Similarities and Differences
Dates: 2021-2025
Funder: AHRC-funded Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) CDA
Oxford supervisors: Dr Frankie Wilson, Bodleian Libraries
Partner university: University of Glasgow
University supervisors: Professor Paul Gooding and Professor Lorna Hughes

Read thesis: Nam, H. L. J. (2025) Mental models of the organisation of scholarly information across the Academy: disciplinary similarities and differences. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow

Name: Amisha Karia
Topic: Culture-led wellbeing: investigating the changing skills of the cultural workforce
Dates: 2021-2026
Funder: ESRC DTP Collaborative Studentship
Oxford supervisors: Dr Hattie Warburton (GLAM Divisional Office) and Gina Koutsika (Ashmolean Museum)
Partner university: University of Leicester
University supervisors: Professor Richard Sandell and Dr Nuala Morse

This project investigates the intersection of cultural heritage and public health. While the benefits of 'social prescribing' are well-documented, this research focuses on the professionals delivering these programs. Using organisational ethnography and GLAM case studies, the study examines the specific skills and competencies required for wellbeing-focused roles. It explores how cultural workers perceive their evolving identities and what institutional structures are needed to support them. This timely project provides unique insight into the professional shifts and organisational changes currently reshaping the UK’s cultural sector.

Name: Rosa Dyer
Topic: Biocultural knowledge, power and poetics in South American featherwork
Dates: 2021-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Laura Van Broekhoven and Professor Andrew Gosler, Pitt Rivers Museum
Partner university: Birkbeck College, University of London
University supervisors: Professor Luciana Martins and Dr Carmen Fracchia

This project examines South American Indigenous featherwork through an interdisciplinary lens of anthropology, ethnobiology, and museum studies. It explores the vital relationships between Indigenous peoples, birds, and their environments, specifically how these connections shape modern activist movements. The research engages with current resistance efforts where feathered artifacts, music, and face paint serve as tools for empowerment against biodiversity loss and threats to territorial rights. By collaborating directly with Indigenous communities, the project aims to centre their voices and stories, providing a more authentic and diverse contextualization of the featherwork held within museum collections. The project also works with the Ethno-ornithology World Atlas, a collaboration between Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, and BirdLife International, to promote the sharing of knowledge, language traditions, and understandings of birds around the world.

Name: India Cole
Topic: The Duchess of Botany: Mary Somerset, Jacob Bobart, and the Formation of the Oxford Botanic Garden
Dates: 2021-2025
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Simon Hiscock and Dr Chris Thorogood, Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum
Partner university: Queen Mary, University of London
University supervisors: Dr Richard Coulton and Professor Markman Ellis

Read thesis: Cole, I. (2025) The Duchess of Botany: The Pioneering Botanical Collecting, Cultivating, and Cataloguing of Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1715). PhD thesis, Queen Mary University of London

Name: Chiara Betti
Topic: Early modern copper plates at the Bodleian Libraries
Dates: 2020-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Alexandra Franklin and Mike Webb, Bodleian Libraries
Partner university: School of Advanced Study, University of London
University supervisors: Dr Elizabeth Savage and Dr Laura Cleaver

This project focuses on the origins, history, and future curatorial treatment of the c.750 engraved and etched copper plates bequeathed by Richard Rawlinson (1690–1755) to the University of Oxford. The majority of the printing plates were originally crafted in the seventeenth or eighteenth century for making picture prints or book illustrations; they illustrate scenes and objects of antiquarian and topographical interest and many portraits and include work by Wenceslaus Hollar and George Vertue. Another group of plates within this collection was made for Rawlinson himself, to depict unique objects in his own vast antiquarian collections, including medieval manuscripts, antique and exotic cultural objects, inscriptions, and seal matrices.

Name: Naï Zakharia
Topic: Gender and histories of Arctic field science, 1900-1950
Dates: 2020-2025
Funder: AHRC Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership
Oxford supervisors: Professor Paul Smith, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Partner university: University of Cambridge
University supervisors: Professor Richard Powell

Read thesis: Zakharia, N. (2024). Women’s Arctic Fieldwork, 1900-1950: Five psychobiographical case studies. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge

Name: Ellie King
Topic: The evaluation of museum engagement: User Centred Design principles and the development of audience-focussed interpretation
Dates: 2019-2024
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Paul Smith, Oxford University Museum of Natural History 
Partner university: University of Warwick
University supervisors: Professor Mark Williams and Dr Paula Wilson, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG)

Read thesis: King, E. (2024) The evaluation of museum engagement : user centred design principles and the development of audience-focused interpretation. PhD thesis, University of Warwick

Name: Anni Byard
Topic: The Iron Age to Roman transition in Britain from the perspective of coin hoards
Dates: 2019-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Chris Howgego (Ashmolean Museum) and Professor Chris Gosden (School of Archaeology)
Partner university: University of Leicester
University supervisors: Professor David Mattingly

This project focuses on coin hoarding across the Iron Age to Roman transition in Britain, focussing on the period c. 60 BC – AD 69. Traditionally such studies have fallen to separate specialists in archaeology and numismatics. This project seeks to cross this divide using landscape and contextual archaeology alongside numismatics to explore the sacrificial economy of coin hoarding, and seeks to identify trends and changes in practice immediately before, during and after the Roman conquest.

Name: Hadiqa Khan
Topic: Material cultures of refuge in Lebanon
Dates: 2019-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Dan Hicks, Pitt Rivers Museum
Partner university: University College London (UCL)
University supervisors: Dr Matthew Davies and Dr Hanna Baumann

This project involves undertaking an interdisciplinary study of the human and material cultures of refuge in Lebanon. The project will build upon approaches from anthropology, contemporary archaeology, refugee studies, development studies and the study of materiality.

Name: Mathilde Daussy-Renaudin
Topic: Science in the service of religion? A museum study
Dates: 2019-2026
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Silke Ackermann, History of Science Museum
Partner university: University College London
University supervisors: Professor Michael J. Reiss

This project investigates the collections of scientific instruments of the History of Science Museum in Oxford. With an immense number of astrolabes, sundials and other astronomical instruments that also carry religious quotations or astrological engravings, this collection raises many questions about the relationships between science and religions. The project is also interested in the very labels of the objects. Indeed, museums label some object ‘Islamic instruments’ or ‘Islamic science’ whereas the phrases ‘Christian instruments’ and ‘Christian science’ are not used. Other ways of labelling objects will be investigated, as well as new narratives to present them. 

Image constructed for this work by a graphic artist. It shows a decayed book-shaped object delicately wrapped in mesh cloth.Name: Justine Provino
Topic: Boundaries of the Book in a Digital Age
Dates: 2019-2024
Funder: AHRC Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership
Oxford supervisors: Dr Christopher Fletcher, Bodleian Libraries
Partner university: University of Cambridge
University supervisors: University of Cambridge

Read thesis: Provino, J. (2024) The Self-Destructive Book and The Library: Agrippa (a book of the dead) (1992-). PhD thesis, University of Cambridge

Name: Elaine Charwat
Topic: The Nature of Replication: Re-contextualizing Natural History Models and Casts from 19th to early 20th century Britain and beyond
Dates: 2018-2023
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Mark Carnall, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Partner university: University College London
University supervisors: Dr Alice Stevenson

Read thesis: Charwat, E. J. (2023) The nature of replication: re-contextualising 19th- and early 20th-century replicas at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History – an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. PhD thesis, University College London

Name: Susan Newell
Topic: Museum Collections, Academic Teaching, and the Making of Geology in the Nineteenth-Century University
Dates: 2018-2023
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Eliza Howlett (Oxford University Museum of Natural History) and Dr Jim Harris (Ashmolean Museum)
Partner university: University of Leeds
University supervisors: Dr Jon Topham

This project examines nineteenth-century geological teaching through the archive of William Buckland, Oxford’s first Reader of Geology. As the subject lacked official recognition, Buckland built a vast collection of specimens, diagrams, and models to engage students and underpin his research. The study highlights the vital role of his wife, Mary Buckland, whose illustrations and inscriptions remain central to the collection. By comparing Oxford’s pedagogical approach with centres like Edinburgh and Cambridge, the research adopts a cross-disciplinary lens - spanning the history of science, art, and collecting - to reveal how Buckland’s materials established geology as a formal academic discipline.

Name: Abbey Ellis ​​​​​​
Topic: Archaeological Plaster Casts: In Search of Authenticity
Dates: 2017-2021
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Milena Melfi and Professor Bert Smith, Ashmolean Museum
Partner university: University of Leicester
University supervisors: Dr Sandra Dudley

Read thesis: Ellis, A. (2021). “The Castness of the Things”: A Visitor’s-Eye View of Value in the Cast Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. PhD thesis, University of Leicester

Name: Helen Goulston
Topic: Where Art and Science Meet: Art and Design at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Dates: 2017-2025
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Paul Smith, Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Partner university: University of Birmingham
University supervisors: Dr Claire Jones

This project researched the interior decorative scheme of the Museum. The Museum was intended as a centre of scientific learning for Oxford University. Henry Acland and John Ruskin were leading figures in the early development of the project, with the Dublin-based architects, Deane and Woodward, winning the building design competition in 1855. By 1859 work had begun on the interior fittings and by 1860 the Museum was open. The interior includes portrait statues and busts, decorative stonework and ironwork, as well as murals and bespoke furnishings.  The project will be examining and recording these objects and complementing this with research in the Museum’s archives. The function and effect of these decorative objects in a museum dedicated to scientific education will be examined, alongside the role of a museum in university education. 

Online guide to the interior of the Oxford University Museum

Name: Brinn Hodgett 
Topic: Visual Archaeology: the photographic character of the archaeology of OGS Crawford
Dates: 2017-2022
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Dr Chris Morton and Professor Chris Gosden
Partner university: Birkbeck, University of London
University supervisors: Dr Lesley McFayden and Dr Jennifer Baird

Read thesis: Hodgett, B. (2022) Life in photographs: archaeology, assemblage and temporality in the archive of O.G.S. Crawford. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London

Name: George Green
Topic: Gold Coinage in the Roman World
Dates: 2016-2020
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Christopher Howgego (Ashmolean Museum) and Professor Mark Pollard (School of Archaeology)
Partner university: University of Warwick
University supervisors: Professor Kevin Butcher

Read thesis: Green, G. A. (2020) Gold coinage in the Roman world: function and production. PhD thesis, University of Warwick

Name: Emily Roy
Topic: Modernization, cultural exchanges and innovation in Russian print culture: St Petersburg in the Talbot Collection
Dates: 2016-2022
Funder: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP)
Oxford supervisors: Professor Catherine Whistler (Ashmolean Museum)
Partner university: University of Cambridge
University supervisors: Dr Rosalind Blakesley and Dr Wendy Pullan

Read thesis: Roy, E. (2022) City of Stone: The Materiality of St Petersburg in Print, c. 1703-1830. PhD thesis, University of Cambridge