2 Leverhulme Trust funded PhD studentships at Glasgow
As
part of 'Collections', the University of Glasgow's Leverhulme Trust
Doctoral Award, two PhD scholarships are currently available in the
School of Geographical and Earth
Sciences, for studies to commence 1st October 2016:
1. Collecting worlds, dissertating geography: disciplinary history and knowledge production in the undergraduate geography dissertation
2. Lord Kelvin, geographer: Considering the life and work of Lord Kelvin from the perspective of the history of the earth sciences
Fuller outlines for both scholarship projects appear further below.
Details of the University of Glasgow Leverhulme Trust 'Collections' award can be found here:
Each PhD scholarship provides 3 years of maintenance (c. £14,100 in
academic session 2016-17), and covers University tuition fees (Home/EU
rate only).
Applicants should hold, or currently be studying for, a Masters degree
qualification in Geography, History or in a cognate subject area.
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on either of the
two projects are encouraged to make informal contact with the
supervisor(s) in the first instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the following documentation:
The application form, which includes a personal statement where you
should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements that make
you a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project.
• Your CV
• Your degree transcripts
• Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 25 March 2016.
Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School Administrator (Adeline.Callander@glasgow.ac.
Collecting Worlds, Dissertating Geography: Disciplinary History and Knowledge Production in the Undergraduate Geography Dissertation
Supervisors: Prof Hayden Lorimer and Prof
Christopher Philo (School of Geographical and Earth Sciences).
How might we keep telling geography’s “small stories” from the
bottom-up? This studentship project presents opportunities to think
critically about the modern intellectual history of geography through
one traditional element of undergraduate degree studies:
the student dissertation.
Generally treated by lecturing staff as a conclusive or defining test of
individual ability, the geography dissertation is also reflective of
the wider student learning experience, encompassing cultures of
fieldwork activity, data gathering, processing and
interpreting, and presentational design. Evidently, every geography
dissertation has a singular story to tell, and is representative of the
student voice in university geography. But each dissertation also speaks
to greater questions of disciplinary trends,
character, range and change, and the ways in which diverse worlds,
peoples and places, have been collected and documented by learning
geographical researchers.
Based on an archival-interpretive approach, studentship activities will
be centred on a large, single collection of undergraduate geography
dissertations held by the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences,
University of Glasgow. The School has retained a
near-complete run of hard copy dissertations (regional; physical;
human) submitted by final-year undergraduate Geography students, c.
1959-2015. Once chaotic, and only semi-catalogued, the dissertation
collection has been recently re-housed and newly organised
with a searchable database, making properly accessible a unique
archival resource spanning almost sixty years of intellectual and
pedagogic change in academic Geography through the praxis of
undergraduate students.
Framed by scholarship in historical geography and the history of
geography, the project can variously address matters of knowledge
production, spaces of learning, scholastic convention, local tradition,
trust and credibility, cultural representation, cartographic
literacy, and disciplinary integration and fragmentation. Ultimately,
the studentship seeks to understand how the exercise of doing a
geography dissertation at University of Glasgow has, variously over
time, reflected or resisted canonical disciplinary narratives.
Lord Kelvin, geographer: Considering the life and work of Lord Kelvin from the perspective of the history of the earth sciences
The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Simon Naylor (Geographical and Earth Sciences)
and Dr Nicky Reeves (Curator of Scientific and Medical History Collections in the The Hunterian).
On
15 June 1896 the University of Glasgow celebrated the jubilee of the
professorship of Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, who had been elected
to the University’s chair of
Natural Philosophy in 1846. Delegates attended from universities and
scientific institutions around the world. The Royal Geographical Society
was represented by Dr John Murray, veteran of the Challenger expedition
and a member of the Council of the Society.
In a subsequent account of the event in its in-house publication, the
Geographical Journal, the Society justified its participation on the
grounds that Kelvin had made a number of important contributions to the
sciences of geography and earth science.
Taking its prompt from the 1896 article in the Geographical Journal,
this PhD project will consider the life and work of Lord Kelvin from the
perspective of the history of the earth sciences. In doing so it will
consider his role in the development of a range
of scientific instruments for use in studies of the earth and its
processes. The project will examine Kelvin’s work on submarine
telegraphy, deep-sea sounding, magnetic variation and marine navigation.
It will also consider his contributions to tidal studies,
to theories of glacier movement and to relations between polar ice-caps
and sea level. The project will make extensive use of the scientific
instrument collections and other historical items held as part of the
Hunterian’s Kelvin collection, from compass cards
to submarine cable charts. The project will benefit greatly from a new
purpose-designed Collections Study Centre in the Kelvin Hall
development, in which the Hunterian’s objects and specimens will be
accessible.
The project will also utilise the archives held in the University of
Glasgow’s Archives and Special Collections, including Kelvin’s
correspondence and papers, patents and business papers, the running of
his laboratory, correspondence with scientific instrument
makers, and lecture notes. This project will improve our understandings
of the relations between the geographical and physical sciences in the
nineteenth century. It will also contribute to current debates regarding
the role of place in the production of scientific
knowledge and instrumental practice. Lastly, the project will improve
understandings of the Hunterian’s instrument collection and bring them
into greater public view.
Nicky Reeves
Curator of Scientific and Medical History Collections (Working pattern: Monday — Thursday)
The Hunterian
University of Glasgow
Gilbert Scott Building
Glasgow G12 8QQ
Tel: +44 (0) 141 330 2131