PhD Studentship in History of Science (The West India Regiments and circum-Atlantic Networks of Knowledge, c.1815-c.1900)

A fully-funded PhD studentship is available at the University of Warwick’s Department of History, in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and the Royal Botanic Gardens, through the AHRC’s Science Museums and Archives Consortium Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship exploring the role of the West India Regiments in projects of circum-Atlantic colonial science, particularly exploration, botany and ethnology, in the nineteenth-century British Empire. Sitting at the interface of histories of science, empire and the military, the project also seeks to contribute to the ‘decolonisation’ of scholarly collections and academic knowledge. This is because the West India Regiments occupy a unique place in the history of British Empire in that they were a regular part of the British army but were almost entirely comprised of men of African descent.

The PhD studentship is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Science Museums and Archives Consortium Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. It will be supervised by Professor David Lambert and Dr James Poskett at the University of Warwick’s Department of History and by Dr Catherine Souch and Dr Sarah L. Evans at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG), with additional support from Kiri Ross-Jones at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The PhD will begin in October 2021.


Application deadline: 5pm Monday 1st March 2021

Interviews: Week beginning Monday 8th March 2021


See link above for application details and further information. 

If you would like to make an informal enquiry, please email Professor David Lambert or Dr James Poskett.