PhD Studentship (deadline March 15): “Making the Oceans Visible: Science and Technology on the Challenger Expedition (1872-‐1876)”
PhD Studentship: “Making the
Oceans Visible: Science and Technology on the Challenger Expedition
(1872-‐1876)”
Following the award of an
AHRC collaborative doctoral studentship to Dr. Simon Werrett (UCL) and Dr
Heloise Finch‐Boyer (National Maritime
Museum) for “Making the Oceans Visible: Science and Technology on the Challenger Expedition (1872-‐
1876)” a 3-‐year fully funded AHRC
studentship at UCL is available. The successful candidate will be expected to
carry out research for a doctorate in the Department of Science and Technology
Studies, supervised by Dr Simon Werrett (STS) and Dr Heloise Finch-‐Boyer (NMM). The student will undertake research at
the National Maritime Museum and other London museums and archives. Candidates
should be able to demonstrate an interest in the study of British maritime
history and the history of science. They are normally expected to have a good
Master’s degree in History, History of Science, Museum Studies, or a related
discipline. A summary of the project is below.
Candidates should apply
through the normal application procedure for the PhD
degree at UCL, via an
online application system:
Candidates should make
clear in their personal statement that they are applying for the “Challenger
studentship”. Candidates should
explain in the statement their experience and/or qualifications for undertaking
this project and they should describe how they will approach the topic to be
researched. Candidates should also provide a sample of their work (an essay or
Masters thesis chapter, for example) no longer than 3000 words.
Applicants are bound by
AHRC eligibility criteria: only EU citizens can be given awards and for a
full award UK residency is required. EU students will receive a fees only
award, and UK resident students will receive fees and a stipend. Please see the
Humanities Division and AHRC pages for detailed guidance on this.
The deadline for applications
will be 15 March 2014 and candidates should be ready to be called for interview
for the studentship in the last week of March in London. It is expected that
the successful candidate will take up the position in October 2014. Further
enquiries about the position may be directed to s.werrett@ucl.ac.uk or hfinch-boyer@rmg.co.uk
Further Particulars:
Making the Oceans
Visible: Science and Technology on the Challenger Expedition (1872‐1876)
This project is a new
partnership between the National Maritime Museum and University College London,
offering an innovative research project combining the
History of
Science, British maritime history and museum studies. Before the nineteenth
century, the ocean depths remained a mystery to Europeans. Even the Navy's
worldwide coastal surveys only emphasized how little people knew. From
1872 to 1876 the H.M.S. Challenger
expedition, sponsored by London’s Royal Society and the Admiralty, set out
to explore deep oceans. As the first expedition sent out with the primary aim
of gathering scientific information, Challenger is now seen as the
foundational voyage for the entire discipline of oceanography. Yet despite its
importance, historians tend to study only small aspects of Challenger,
and popular accounts tend to see the voyage as a “new dawn” of science. This
PhD project examines the legacy of earlier exploration voyages for Challenger
and considers its significance for histories of science, anthropology and
museum studies.
Although scientists on
board pioneered new deep-‐water collecting
techniques, the expedition actually drew on a far longer tradition of maritime
science and exploration that began with Captain Cook. The Challenger story
is now told in museums and aquariums around the world as story about
environmental protection and saving our “blue planet”. In fact, at the end of
the 19th century audiences were more interested in Challenger’s results
which suggested the potential of commercial fisheries beyond Europe's seas, and the exotic ethnographic materials brought
back from remote Pacific islands.
Scholars have long sought
to understand scientific expeditions at sea. Historians of European exploration
have described life on board and encounters with other peoples in great detail.
Yet the centrality of Cook tends to anchor histories of exploration in the
1770-‐1840 period, whereas this
project analyses its legacy in important later Victorian voyages such as Challenger.
Many historians have focused attention on ship technology or the precision
instruments used in Challenger, isolating its science and engineering
aspects. This project links the science to the cultural, political and social
dimensions of Challenger's role in exploration history. Museum studies
scholars are researching how exhibitions can change our assumptions about the
history of exploration and geography. Studying how Challenger was exhibited
from the 1880s and the stories told about oceanography adds to this research.
It also contributes to discussions about how exhibitions using historic objects
can present scientific debates.
Research Questions
Given Challenger’s significance,
the central focus of the project will be an analysis of the influences on the
voyage and its legacy. How did Challenger make the ocean knowable
through experiments, practical skills and expertise? How were the results of
the expedition made visible to different audiences in the past and today? The
project will explore three issues:
1. Challenger used
novel techniques: bottom trawls, depth soundings, temperature measurements and
specimen collections. The project will assess the ship, navigation and
crew modifications deployed to make this possible.
What new instruments, techniques and practices enabled Challenger,
its scientists, officers and crew, to make the ocean knowable?
2. The project
will situate the history of the instruments and techniques used by Challenger
in a longer tradition. While the voyage pioneered the use of photography,
for example, the traditional method of painting and drawing specimens was also
used. How did practices on Challenger differ from those used in previous
voyages of exploration?
3. Knowing the
oceans did not, of course, finish with the end of Challenger’s voyage,
but continued after. Objects and materials collected on the expedition were
taken on land, distributed, researched, exhibited and discussed in laboratories,
lecture halls, and museums across the country. The project will ask: how was
knowledge of the oceans made visible after the Challenger expedition
concluded?
The student will consider
the entire history of Challenger’s voyage. There will also be considerable
leeway to focus on one or more of the following research themes:
• History of
Science and Technology: For the first time on Challenger the Captain
shared his cabin with the chief scientist. This shows how closely sailing and
science were linked on the expedition. The student could focus attention on the
wide range of old and new instruments, ship modifications and new navigational
practices that proved to be the foundation of oceanography.
• History of
Anthropology: Challenger pioneered the use of photography, which provided
graphic images of communities encountered on the voyage. The crew collected
ethnographic objects from them, including human remains. The student could
examine how previous exploration influenced the way that Challenger studied
non-‐European cultures, and
how the expedition informed later cultural evolution theories.
• History of Museum Studies and Material Culture: The student could focus
on what happened to the expedition's oceanographic
materials, instruments,
specimens and objects
after the voyage. It is possible to demonstrate how artefacts circulated around
museums, universities, laboratories and exhibitions in the decades after Challenger.
The student could show which objects were used to communicate knowledge long
after the expedition had concluded.
Research Method
The student will begin
researching the archival and object collections at the National Maritime Museum
that are linked to the Challenger voyage. NMM has an official Challenger
photograph album with ethnographic and technical images (some of the first
photographs to be made on a voyage of exploration), memoirs,
correspondence, logbooks
and scientific data from Commission Captain Nares, Commander Maclear, Paymaster
Hynes, Navigating Lieutenant and Abraham Smith. NMM holds Challenger oceanographic
samples, instruments, medals, lithographs, ships plans, charts and models. As
part of the doctoral research, the student will improve catalogue records of
these items. The student will also be able to draw on a wealth of manuscripts, artworks
and objects related to previous eighteenth-‐ and nineteenth-‐century British voyages of exploration.
After refining the
research question, the student will link this material to objects and archives
in other institutions. British institutions that have relevant holdings include
the UK Hydrographic Office, the Natural History Museum, the British Museum, the
Science Museum, the Royal Society, Edinburgh University and the University of
Southampton. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of
California, San Diego and the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco also have relevant
objects
and archives related to Challenger.
To enhance research on
how the historical objects derived from the Challenger expedition made
the oceans visible, the student will engage with museum curators, restoration
experts, learning professionals and design experts at the UCL Institute of
Making. The student will study and experiment with ways of recreating
historical evidence from Challenger (for example coral or sediment
samples, water collecting bottles, dredgers or ethnographic objects) using 3D
printing, reproductions, or digital software. These will provide resources for
asking new research questions and for communicating the research, and will be
trialled in learning programmes at the Rethink space and future Exploration
Gallery at RMG.