The Wellcome Trust and the University of Manchester PhD Studentship

The University of Manchester is happy to announce the PhD Scholarship in History for all the outstanding candidates who want to get higher education in England. Student’s HOME fees will be covered in addition to the stipend.

Summary

Project Description

The PhD project will help to support the project team’s ambition to discover how people’s efforts to sleep well c.1500-1750 were influenced by a distinctive set of environmental relations and linked ‘environing practices’ in which people engaged with their physical surroundings to optimise their sleep timings, bedding materials, climatic conditions, and to prepare soporific tonics. The team will reconstruct the principal agents, materials, and ‘environing’ practices that were used to manage sleep in ecologically distinct parts of Britain, Ireland and England’s emergent American colonies of Virginia and Newfoundland, alongside the bodies of medical, botanical, climatic and material knowledge associated with them.

The project will also assess the immediate and longer-term impacts of early modern processes of environmental change (e.g. the ‘Little Ice Age’; agrarian reform; new land management practices; increased urbanisation; global mobility of people and goods). A diverse range of source materials will be used, including different forms of life writing, travel writing, material and archaeological evidence, inventories, recipe books, medical treatises, health regimens, herbals, almanacs, climatological treatises and natural histories. Most of these primary sources will be located in UK-based archives and at libraries, archives and museums in North America.

The PhD student will be responsible for locating relevant material and for collecting data via digital images and transcription. They will be jointly responsible with Professor Handley and the research associates for analysing this data and producing written work pertinent to the project as part of the PhD programme.

Eligibility

Applicants should hold a Bachelors (Honours) degree at 2:1 level or above (or its international equivalent) in a related subject; and a UK Master’s degree with an overall average of 65% or higher (merit), with a minimum of 65% in the dissertation.

Other eligibility criteria

• BA and MA in early modern history which demonstrates an area of research expertise pertinent to this project, for example, environmental history; medical history; social history; material culture; food history; early American history;
• A strong grasp of recent historiographical debates pertinent to the project, including those linked to environmental change, health and medicine; material culture;
• The ability to understand and engage quickly with new historiographical debates and with the arguments and approaches adopted in allied fields, and to frame research findings within a variety of historiographical and methodological contexts;
• Excellent analytical and writing skills;
• Experience of working with archival sources in archives and libraries;
• Excellent organisational skills;
• Ability to work both independently and as part of a team.

Award Information

Student Stipend £19,919-£23,298 (student HOME fees will be covered in addition to the stipend)

Application Process

Inquiries should be addressed to Professor Sasha Handley (sasha.handley@manchester.ac.uk)

Applicants should apply to the PhD programme by February 5, 2021, and indicate their programme application; within the funding section, they wish to be considered for the Wellcome Trust Studentship.

Additional documentation

Provide an additional statement, in which you should detail why you are a good fit for the research project. The statement should be no more than 500 words.

Apply Now