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Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CDAs) A Collaborative Doctoral Award allows you to:
Embroidering empire: women, textiles, and colonial collecting, 1872-1950 banner image

Embroidering Empire: Women, Textiles, and Colonial Collecting, 1872-1950

De Montfort University

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century British women collected and creatively engaged with ideas of Empire through embroidery. Working closely with the collections of the Royal School of Needlework (RSN), and particularly Georgina Annie Grove’s collecting of a millennium of global textiles, this M4C CDA will investigate the relationship between embroidery and Empire.

Reframing south asian stories: uncovering and activating lost histories through local newspaper photography banner image

Reframing South Asian Stories: uncovering and activating lost histories through local newspaper photography

De Montfort University

This project will explore MirrorPix’s newspaper photography archive to uncover the local press’s visual depiction of South Asian experiences in 1970s Midlands. Working with communities to revisit stories from the past, it will reinvisage perceptions of South-Asian heritage and how archival metadata and language shape local archival history.

Co-creating collections for priority and future audiences: socially engaged photography and small to medium sized public organisations banner image

Co-Creating Collections for Priority and Future Audiences: Socially Engaged Photography and Small to Medium Sized Public Organisations

Birmingham City University

The CDA is a unique opportunity for a practice-based researcher to work in the context of a live national partnership project supported by an internationally recognized, cross institutional supervisory team within the context of the UK’s leading socially engaged public photography programme.Based at the Open Eye Gallery, with access to two additional national collections housed at museums across Aberdeenshire local authority, Scotland and Armagh local authority, Northern Ireland, this CDA invites candidates to think through the challenges faced by small-to-medium art organisations in how they use and build meaningful and accessible collections through socially engaged processes.

Decolonising and digitising the royal shakespeare collection banner image

Decolonising and Digitising the Royal Shakespeare Collection

Birmingham City University

The first sustained investigation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Fine Art and Sculpture” collection in Stratford-upon-Avon, this project analyses an internationally significant theatre collection through a decolonial lens. By exploring the archive’s colonial connections and how these might be understood, it will develop a critical and historical approach to the RSC’s holdings. Its final outputs include work towards the digitisation of the collection.

Supporting policy and practice for thriving, just and sustainable artist livelihoods banner image

Supporting Policy and Practice for Thriving, Just and Sustainable Artist Livelihoods

Coventry University

What would, or could, a thriving, just and sustainable ecology for artist livelihoods look like? This project will work with Creative United, its artist infrastructure and Artist Advisory Groups to imagine, evidence and design policy to bring forward such possibilities.

The coventry muslim history project – towards a west midlands vernacular of islam and muslim life banner image

The Coventry Muslim History Project – Towards a West Midlands Vernacular of Islam and Muslim Life

Coventry University

The Coventry Muslim History project is a collaboration between Coventry University and the Coventry Muslim Forum. The project will focus on uncovering the history of Islam and Muslims in Coventry setting it within Coventry’s wider history. It will explore the experiences and journeys of Muslims in Coventry and the West Midlands, as they made this city their home.

South asian dance as a lens to investigate urgent contemporary narratives banner image

South Asian Dance as a Lens to Investigate Urgent Contemporary Narratives

Coventry University

This research project investigates the impact of South Asian dance on complex contemporary narratives, such as the decolonial agenda and the urgent climate crisis. Akademi are the partnering organisation who work with South Asian dance and have a focus on pressing environmental challenges.

An inquiry into the bertrand russell archives and their screen adaptation potential for the east asian market banner image

An inquiry into the Bertrand Russell Archives and their screen adaptation potential for the East Asian market

De Montfort University

There is a rising market for British led-research informed biopic feature films, this collaborative project aims to respond to this opportunity. This is a practice-led collaborative PhD project designed to develop unexplored archival materials into a ready-to-shoot feature biopic screenplay, about the Nobel Prize winning British philosopher, Bertrand Russell. With a specific focus, the screenplay will be developed particularly aiming at the Asian market. In line with the AHRC’s latest funding strategies, this project will not only generate original research outputs, but also societal and economic impact.

Unearthly ecologies: exploring environmentalism and sustainability beyond earth through literature and culture banner image

Unearthly Ecologies: Exploring Environmentalism and Sustainability Beyond Earth Through Literature and Culture

Nottingham Trent University

This project will explore environmental and ecological issues relating to space exploration and establishing habitats beyond the earth. Ambitions to expand human activity in low-earth orbit, on the Lunar surface, and on Mars have escalated significantly in recent years, with: • geological sample and return missions to the Lunar surface and Mars intensifying • night sky pollution producing new inequalities on Earth • future space exploration threatened by a substantial increase in orbiting objects and debris • national and commercial space agencies stepping-up plans to establish low earth orbit, lunar, and Mars habitations.

Engaging audiences with stories of marginalised communities in rugby through a case study of nottingham rugby football club banner image

Engaging audiences with stories of marginalised communities in rugby through a case study of Nottingham Rugby Football Club

Nottingham Trent University

This project will focus on two areas. Firstly, it will produce a searchable catalogue to allow other researchers to access the archives, opening up the project to an international audience. Secondly, this project will uncover hidden stories attentive to questions of race, class, sexuality, and gender by highlighting relevant parts of the club’s history and producing a public-facing output that tells these stories.

Non-radicalising “resilience creators”: youth masculinities banner image

Non-radicalising “resilience creators”: youth masculinities

University of Birmingham

Challenging negative stereotypes about teenage boys, you will research youth agency and cultural participation in their non-radicalisation to violent and/or hateful extremism. Working with ConnectFutures and their youth beneficiaries across the Midlands, you will explore teen masculinities and cultures to co-produce cultural tools and resources to support youth resiliency.

Industry, empire and slavery in birmingham’s anglican churches (1715-1905) banner image

Industry, Empire and Slavery in Birmingham’s Anglican Churches (1715-1905)

University of Birmingham

This project explores the relationship between industrialist benefactors with business interests in slavery and colonialism, and the Anglican Church in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Birmingham, focussing on Birmingham Cathedral, St Martin in the Bullring, and St Paul’s in the Jewellery Quarter.

€hidden voices’: visible and invisible women in the shakespeare birthplace trust’s collection banner image

€Hidden Voices’: Visible and Invisible Women in The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Collection

University of Birmingham

The project is for a doctoral student to make visible the presence of women in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT)’s extensive archive, library and museum collections. What ‘hidden’ women’s stories will you extract from the holdings of female writers, scholars, activists and theatre practitioners. Whose narrative(s) will you tell?

Set in stone: understanding ancient farming communities through dartmoor’s prehistoric monuments banner image

Set in Stone: Understanding Ancient Farming Communities through Dartmoor’s Prehistoric Monuments

University of Leicester

This project will explore Dartmoor National Park's well-preserved prehistoric monumental landscape, investigating early farming communities' attitudes towards stone. Using novel geoarchaeological approaches, it will uncover how monuments were sourced, quarried, moved, and modified, informing future landscape management and contributing to current debates on heritage conservation, climate impact, and global mobility.

Collecting contemporary art for the nation: building the arts council collection, 1950-1989 banner image

Collecting Contemporary Art for the Nation: Building the Arts Council Collection, 1950-1989

University of Leicester

How do you collect art that is ahead of its time? Over 1950-1989, the Arts Council Collection committee acquired artworks by artists who became important to other national collecting institutions often only much later. This project explores the committee’s support for avant-garde movements and for equity of representation.

Exploring yorkshire’s historical landscapes: place-names, archives, and audiences banner image

Exploring Yorkshire’s historical landscapes: place-names, archives, and audiences

University of Nottingham

You will work on medieval documents held by West Yorkshire Archive Services and North Yorkshire County Record Office, analysing the place-names they preserve, and using those names to gain an understanding of the historical environment of selected areas of Yorkshire, and its relationship with the present-day environment.

Conferencing british geography: disciplinary history told through annual conferences (1949-2029) and their archives banner image

Conferencing British Geography: Disciplinary History told through Annual Conferences (1949-2029) and their Archives

University of Nottingham

This research project will provide a new history of post-WWII British geography, constructed through studying the lived experience and academic atmosphere of the annual conferences of the Institute of British Geographers (IBG). The student will have unrivalled access to the Institute’s archives and will also be embedded in the team which organises the annual conferences today.

Digital approaches to medieval chant and local religious heritage banner image

Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage

University of Nottingham

UK archives preserve thousands of medieval music books and their fragments. But who made them, and for whom? Working with experts at the University of Nottingham and Oxford’s Bodleian Library, this project leverages the latest digital technologies to develop innovative localisation techniques, to benefit archives, heritage organisations, and their audiences.

Warwickshire identities: early modern archival perspectives banner image

Warwickshire Identities: Early Modern Archival Perspectives

University of Warwick

This project examines how the people of early modern Warwickshire viewed and represented themselves in relation to their neighbours, the county community, wider political nation, and emerging global connections. It builds upon new research by historians, anthropologists and literary scholars to investigate the construction, representation, interpretation, and definition of local ‘belonging’ between c.1500 and 1750. For this purpose, the student will look for signs of – likely overlapping and competing -- markers of identity at the levels of individuals, families, guilds, parishes, boroughs, manors and county.

Anglo-french relations during the age of revolutions banner image

Anglo-French relations during the age of Revolutions

University of Warwick

This research project will explore Franco-British exchange at key English Heritage sites during the period from the start of the French Revolution to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo and transform our understanding of how people, ideas, texts, and material objects from France and its colonies were circulating in Britain.

Editing empire: the hakluyt society in (post-)imperial britain, 1846 to the present banner image

Editing Empire: The Hakluyt Society in (Post-)imperial Britain, 1846 to the present

University of Warwick

This project explores how the Society selected, edited and disseminated historical materials, and how these sources and their editorial framing impacted the understanding of travel and travel writing during the expansion, and break up, of the British Empire. It also examines how the Society adjusted to changing circumstances in the era of decolonisation. In this way, the project contributes to ongoing conversations within the Hakluyt Society about its institutional past and publishing remit, as well as broader efforts to ‘decolonise’, and develop more critical understanding of, ‘imperial’ institutions, as well as about the continuing significance of the colonial legacies embedded in travel writing and its history.

Centring the rural: organisational identities, public engagement and curatorial practice at wysing arts centre, 1989 to today banner image

Centring the Rural: Organisational Identities, Public Engagement and Curatorial Practice at Wysing Arts Centre, 1989 to today

University of Leicester

Founded in rural Cambridgeshire in 1989, Wysing Art Centre provides alternative environments and structures for artistic research, experimentation, discovery and production. Examining Wysing’s organisational identities and curatorial practice as a central case study, this project investigates the changing relationship between contemporary art and rural places over the last 35 years.

From independent film to integrated praxis: regional and historical contexts to the birmingham film and video workshop (1979-1989) banner image

From Independent Film to Integrated Praxis: Regional and Historical Contexts to the Birmingham Film and Video Workshop (1979-1989)

Birmingham City University

This project examines the activities and impact of the Birmingham Film & Video Workshop (BFVW), an influential West Midlands film organisation which operated between 1979-1989 under the leadership of Roger Shannon.