8 AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards in Science Museum Group/ BT Archives

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards in Science Museum Group/ BT Archives

Applications for students starting September 2013 are Now OPEN!

Following an application by the Science Museum Research & Public History Department, a consortium of the Science Museum Group Museums along with BT Archives has been awarded 24 AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral studentships over the next three years.

We are welcoming applications for the first 8 studentships due to start in September 2013.

Please visit the Science Museum Research Pages for further details:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about_us/new_research_folder/News%20and%20Events.aspx

For general questions about Collaborative Doctoral Awards in the Science Museum Group/ BT Archives email

research@sciencemuseum.ac.uk.

Alison Hess

Associate Curator of Research & Public History, Science Museum

Funded PhD studentship: "Making Germs Real" (King's College London/Science Museum)

Fully-funded AHRC PhD studentship:  “Making germs real: creating, performing and learning about a dangerous invisible thing in the public sphere, c.1860-1930”

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD working on how germs were made real to different groups and individuals. During the late 19th century and early 20th centuries germs became entities to be widely feared and respected, even though very few people had ever seen them. This studentship is one of eight fully-funded awards made by the newly-established Collaborative Doctoral Partnership managed by the Science Museum Group. The project will be supervised by Dr Anna Maerker (King’s College London) and Robert Bud (Science Museum, London). The studentship, which is funded for three years full-time equivalent, will begin in September 2013.

The Studentship

The acceptance of the germ theory depended on more than the publication of experimental results in academic journals – germs were made real through images, objects, practices, and spaces, from micro-photographs and three-dimensional models to new methods of washing hands and hospital designs.

The student will be encouraged to explore rich and under-researched parts of the Science Museum’s collection which have been central to the experience of germs. These include the collection of educational microscopes, illustrated books, and professional medical clothing (e.g. nurses’ uniforms). Objects such as the collection of soaps and cleaning materials can be used to provide links to other sections of the museum. 

The student will have an opportunity to contribute to the new medical gallery planned by the Science Museum. The doctoral researcher will create new object interpretations and identify relevant themes for the development of storylines for the new gallery.  More generally,  this project will provide an opportunity to interrogate our models of public engagement in historical and contemporary perspective, to investigate the roles of images, objects, and interactive practices for knowledge creation at the museum, and to reflect critically on our understanding of lay knowledge versus expert knowledge.

Questions may include: How did practices of making germs real shape relationships between people? How did such practices change understandings of disease? How did commercial interests influence the development of new techniques and technologies for the lab, the operating theatre, the ward, the practice, and the home?  What were the moral implications of the performance of germs, and how did they change attributions of responsibility and authority?

The source base for the project is available locally, at the Science Museum itself, at the Wellcome Library, the British Library, and in the archives of local hospitals and medical associations. The student will be helped to be a member of an active community of scholars in the public and material culture of science.

Methodological approaches will be based on a solid historical understanding of the history of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medicine. We would especially expect the student to bring or to develop a sound familiarity with recent work in the history of Science, Technology and Medicine which engages with the role of objects, performative practices and with gestural knowledge. We would also expect the student to engage with important scholarship in Science & Technology Studies on the role of technologies for “configuring the user”, and for the relationship between experts and publics. Depending on the student’s background, additional approaches may include user studies in contemporary museology, or work on performance and gesture from medical anthropology.

How to Apply

Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree in history, the history of medicine/science or another relevant discipline, and will need to satisfy AHRC academic and residency eligibility criteria, including Masters level advanced research training or equivalent. Preference may be given to candidates with prior experience working with historical instruments and objects, though others are encouraged to apply.

Applicants should submit a short curriculum vitae and a brief letter outlining qualifications for the studentship in the form of a single Word file no more than three pages in total. The names and contact details of two academic referees should also be supplied. Applications should be sent to Anna Maerker (anna.maerker@kcl.ac.uk) no later than 5 June 2013.

Interviews are scheduled to be held in the Science Museum, London, in the week of 17-21 June 2013.

For further information concerning the project, please contact Anna Maerker (anna.maerker@kcl.ac.uk).

***

Dr Anna Maerker

Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine

Department of History

King's College London

Strand

London WC2R 2LS

phone: +44 (0)20 7848 1948

PhD studentship, Manchester: Spaces of industrial heritage (AHRC-funded collaborative)

Spaces of industrial heritage: a history of uses, perceptions and remaking of the Liverpool Road Station site, Manchester

Fully-funded AHRC PhD studentship

Application deadline: Friday 14 June

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD on the former Liverpool Road Station complex which forms the site of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. This studentship is one of eight fully-funded awards made by the newly-established Collaborative Doctoral Partnership managed by the Science Museum Group.

The project will be supervised by Dr James Sumner (University of

Manchester) and Jack Kirby (Museum of Science and Industry).

The studentship, which is funded for three years full-time equivalent, will begin in September 2013.

THE STUDENTSHIP

The world's first passenger railway, connecting the manufacturing and trading hub of Manchester to Liverpool and the coast, opened in 1830.

The original Manchester terminus building on Liverpool Road in the Castlefield district, site of the fort of Roman Manchester, survives along with its departure platform. Yet the site was closed to passengers within a few years: it developed instead as a goods station, with a major complex of warehouses, extending Castlefield's established importance as a canal freight hub. After a long period serving the growth of industrial Manchester, and following sharp decline across the middle years of the twentieth century, Liverpool Road Station closed in 1975. Soon afterwards, the site found a new role as home to the Museum of Science and Industry, re-opening in 1983.

The project will chart the uses and perceptions of Liverpool Road, and its relationship with the city and wider region, from the 1820s origins of the railway project to the Museum's opening. It offers opportunities to combine approaches from social and cultural history, the history of science and technology, historical geography, industrial archaeology, heritage studies and museology. Research questions include: how did the wider contexts of industrialisation and de-industrialisation influence the uses and meanings of Liverpool Road, and how, in turn, did the material form and working cultures of the site influence wider developments? What can we learn by bringing sites of transportation (of goods and people) more strongly into a narrative of industrial history currently dominated by sites of production and dwelling? How far can the historian go to capture the changing nature of buildings and landscapes 'as lived', including sights, sounds, smells, reputations and expectations? And how can museum professionals use these insights in interpreting historic sites?

The student will be based in Manchester and will use the fabric of the site itself – the Museum buildings and adjacent viaducts and goods yards – as a central resource. The focus will not be on industrial archaeology (on which extensive research has already been carried out), but on tracing documentary evidence to explain how the site was formerly used and understood, and examining how to interpret its significance for Museum visitors. This research will involve surveying sources such as local newspapers, and business and family records held in local archives. The study will also seek to identify and interview former workers at the goods station, and those involved in the site's 150th anniversary celebrations in 1980 and the establishment of the Museum in 1982-3.

HOW TO APPLY

Applicants should have a good Master's degree (or equivalent) in the history of science/technology, general history, human geography, museum studies or another related subject, and will need to satisfy AHRC academic and residency eligibility criteria, as listed on the AHRC website at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/ .

Applicants should submit a short curriculum vitae and a brief letter outlining qualifications for the studentship in the form of a single Word file no more than three pages in total. The names and contact details of two academic referees should also be supplied. Applications should be sent to james.sumner@manchester.ac.uk no later than FRIDAY 14 JUNE 2013.

Interviews are scheduled to be held at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, on THURSDAY 27 JUNE 2013.

For further information concerning the project, please contact James Sumner (james.sumner@manchester.ac.uk).

==

My book: Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700-1880

http://www.pickeringchatto.com/brewing | August 2013

Leeds: 2 PhD studentships in history, philosophy and social studies of biology

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

2 AHRC COLLABORATIVE PHD STUDENTSHIPS IN THE HISTORY, PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL STUDIES OF BIOLOGY

Two AHRC-funded PhD studentships are available from 1 October 2013 for collaborative research between the Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, and the National Institute for Agricultural Botany (NIAB).

Both studentships are connected with the project “Food Security in the Biotech Age: The National Institute of Agricultural Botany Since 1970.”  Founded in 1919 and based in Cambridge, NIAB has been at the forefront of seed testing and the development of crop-plant varieties in Britain for nearly a century.  (Its role in the development of a new variety of "superwheat" received major media coverage only last week; see, for the BBC's story, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22498274 )

A previous AHRC award funded PhD research, now nearing completion, on the history of NIAB from 1919 to 1969.

One of the new sub-projects aims to take the historical story of NIAB forward into the biotech age, from 1970 to the present.  The other sub-project aims to examine NIAB now as a complex scientific-technological institution, using methods from recent anthropology, sociology, and philosophy of science.  In both, the project students will have significant scope for developing the projects in directions suited to their interests.

In more detail:

(1) Biotech Meets Agricultural Botany: NIAB Since 1970

This project will draw on a mixture of archival sources held at NIAB and interviews with participants to reconstruct the intellectual and institutional development of NIAB in the biotech age – a crucial period in the Institute’s history as well as in the wider history of the biological sciences.  It aims to recover a novel perspective on the rise of biotech and the debate over GM crops in Britain, and more generally on the changing relations between science, commerce, and the British state after 1970.

(2) Science as Social Epistemology: NIAB as a Site of Knowledge Production

This project will draw on perspectives from recent philosophy, sociology and anthropology of science in order to map out the many groups involved in research at NIAB, and the complex dynamics within and among them, through a combination of “embedded” participant-observation in the working life of NIAB and through interviews with staff members. The project student will use this new mapping to test a range of recent theses about the nature of twenty-first-century scientific knowledge.

The supervisors for both projects will be Prof. Gregory Radick (Leeds HPS) and Dr Tina Barsby (CEO, NIAB).  The students will be expected to create virtual exhibits of project-related materials and also to contribute to local, national and international meetings.

In developing their research and the associated activities, they will be able to draw on the support not only of the Leeds HPS Centre and NIAB, but also of the White Rose Science and Technology Studies Network, which regularly brings together students and staff at the Universities of Leeds, York and Sheffield who share interests in contemporary bioscience (see http://www.york.ac.uk/satsu/dtc-sts-pathway/)

Enquiries may be directed to G.M.Radick@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:G.M.Radick@leeds.ac.uk>

Scholarship Funding

For both sub-projects, applicants must be either UK residents (full studentship) or EU nationals (fees only).  They should normally have, or expect soon to be awarded, a Masters degree in a relevant discipline (e.g. history and philosophy of science; science and technology studies; history, philosophy, anthropology, or sociology with an appropriate focus; etc.), though exceptions can be made for applicants with strong undergraduate records and relevant experience.  The studentships support three years' full-time work, but can be taken up on either a full-time or a part-time basis.  Standard tuition fees and maintenance grants will be paid by the AHRC to the nominated student.  In the 2012/2013 academic year full-time awards provided a maintenance grant payment of £13,590.00.  In addition to these amounts, the AHRC will make an additional, one-off maintenance payment of £550 in May to cover the special costs of working at two sites. Students may also be eligible for UK study visits and one overseas study visit as well as one overseas conference for the duration of the award.  From the non-academic partner, NIAB, the student will also receive a contribution to maintenance and may also be eligible for travel and related workplace expenses.  (Part-time awards provide a maintenance grant up to a maximum of 60% of a full-time award and half the full-time rate of tuition fees.) Renewal of the studentship each year is subject to satisfactory academic progress.

Applications

Application forms and further details are available from the Postgraduate Administration Office, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, email: humpgenq@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:humpgenq@leeds.ac.uk>, tel: 0113 343 3644 or 0113 343 3623

The closing date for applications for both studentships is Friday 14 June 2013.  Interviews for both studentships will take place the following week.

Please specify whether you are applying for sub-project (1), sub-project (2), or for both.

For more on the University of Leeds Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/40006/centre_for_history_and_philosophy_of_science

For more on the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, see http://www.niab.com/

Gregory Radick

Professor of History and Philosophy of Science School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Tel: (UK) 0113 343 3269

Email: G.M.Radick@leeds.ac.uk<mailto:G.M.Radick@leeds.ac.uk>

Website: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/20048/philosophy/person/861/gregory_radick

Editor-in-Chief, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences