AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship opp: Constructing and Consuming Imagined Futures: Advertising Healthcare
The University of Leeds
Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, in collaboration
with the Science Museum and the Boots Company Archive, invites
applications for a fully-funded three-year PhD studentship on healthcare
advertising in 20th-century Britain. The
studentship award has been made by the Science Museums & Archives
Consortium under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme.
The project, due to begin in October 2017, will be supervised by
Dr James Stark and
Dr Adrian Wilson at the University of Leeds, Dr Oisín Wall at the Science Museum, and Sophie Clapp at Boots Company Archive.
The project will
investigate, compare and explain the use of language, expertise and
authority in printed advertisements and publicity produced for public
audiences and medical professionals regarding different
healthcare products and campaigns in twentieth-century Britain. Drawing
especially on extensive records at the Science Museum and Boots Company
Archive the
student will focus on three case studies
across the twentieth century. This will provide a national picture of
the interactions between healthcare producers and consumers before the
NHS, shortly after it was founded, and once it was
well-established.
The project is
especially suited to candidates with interests in British history,
history of modern science, technology and medicine, history of
advertising/marketing, and
medical humanities and sociology. The guiding research questions which the individual case studies will
address will be:
1.
How was the efficacy of products or services presented to different professional and public audiences?
2.
Who were the targets of different medical advertising drives? How and why were they selected?
3.
How did medical marketing utilise imagined futures centred around the eradication of disease in order to sell products?
4.
What techniques of advertising were used, and how
did these differ over time and as between commercial and public-health
campaigns?
5.
What do different advertising techniques reveal
about how particular medical concerns were viewed, or perceived to be
viewed, by audiences?
The PhD studentship will
be based at the University of Leeds Centre for the History and
Philosophy of Science and the Science Museum. The Leeds HPS Centre has a
very active graduate programme, including currently
around 30 HPS research students, ten of whom are
AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Awards holders. The wider School of
Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, within which HPS is
located, has strong affiliations with the cross-School Centre for
Medical Humanities, and offers a stimulating interdisciplinary
environment for postgraduate research.
Application details
Candidates should have, or expect to attain, a good degree and should meet AHRC eligibility criteria:
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/