Fully-funded collaborative PhD studentship: University of Edinburgh and National Museums Scotland
The University of Edinburgh’s Science, Technology and Innovation Studies subject group, in collaboration with National Museums Scotland,
invites applications for a fully-funded three-year PhD studentship on
the history of collecting scientific materials in museums. The
studentship award has been made by the Scottish Cultural Heritage
Consortium under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme.
The project, due to begin in October 2017, will be supervised by Dr Niki Vermeulen and Dr Dominic Berry of the University of Edinburgh, and Dr Tacye Phillipson and Dr Sam Alberti of National Museums Scotland.
The studentship
will research and analyse the collecting practices of National Museums
Scotland with a focus on materials from the sciences, looking at three
key museum acquisitions: the transfer of material by Professor Lyon
Playfair in 1858, including 18th-century chemical material such as
Joseph Black’s glassware; the Scotland-wide university collecting survey
undertaken by NMS in 1985-7, including standardised pieces of lab
equipment such as spectrophotometers; and present efforts on collecting
for the future (2017-2020). The aim is to reconsider these collections
as forms of intellectual property, attending to knowledge and forms of
ownership associated with these collections, and understanding how the
object’s meaning (intellectual, personal, social) changes or is
maintained as it moves from its context of use to being an artefact.
The Selection Process – Deadline
for applications is 28th April 2017. You should write to either Niki
Vermeulen or Tacye Phillipson to express your interest in the project,
or make any informal enquiries, before making an application. niki.vermeulen@ed.ac.uk T.
A short-listing
meeting will be convened after the deadline, and short-listed candidates
will be interviewed in Edinburgh or via video conference in the
following weeks. For details of the application procedure please see: http://www.stis.ed.ac.uk/news/