Forwarded message from Kate Giles <[log in to unmask]>:

Funded PhD Studentships 

UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE PLANNING & LANDSCAPE 
TWO RESEARCH COUNCIL STUDENTSHIPS 

Applications are invited for two fully funded three year studentships in 
the following areas: 

1. ESRC CASE studentship From Homogeneity to Diversity: The Heritage of 
Mass Housing and Housing Market Renewal.

2. Characterising the Post-Industrial City: a Case Study of Housing in 
Newcastle upon Tyne.

For further details, see below. For information on how to apply please 
visit http://www.apl.ncl.ac.uk/courses/studentships

Or contact [log in to unmask] 0191 222 6014 


Further details: 

1. ESRC CASE studentship From Homogeneity to Diversity: The Heritage of 
Mass Housing and Housing Market Renewal
working with John Pendlebury and Stuart Cameron in collaboration with 
English Heritage. 

The project will examine different discourses on the role of the built 
environment in achieving social sustainability with reference to the 
Government’s Housing Market Renewal (Pathfinder) programme; between an 
ideology that regards the mass housing stock of the nineteenth and 
twentieth centuries as incompatible with the creation of socially-mixed 
communities and functioning housing markets and an ideology that regards 
such areas of housing as integral to, and an essentially positive element 
of, the character of the industrial midlands and north. The aims of the 
project will be to: 

• Examine different models of achieving social sustainability based around 
creating social diversity or sustaining existing communities, • Examine 
different physical means of achieving these objectives (through 
replacement or evolution of stock), 

• Assess the economics and compatibility of different combinations of 
social and physical change with the aims and interests of different 
stakeholders, 

• Examine how different types of intervention strategies based on the 
physical evolution of stock might impact on the character of place and 
heritage values. 

For English Heritage, the appreciation of housing that is essentially 
typical is part of a wider move to appreciate grassroots heritage. It is 
the very uniformity of historic solutions to the mass housing needs of the 
working class which are being examined in terms of heritage value and 
contribution to the local character of urban areas, along with the 
challenge to EH of developing a better understanding of the social and 
economic dynamics of intervention in these areas. 


2. AHRC CASE studentship Characterising the Post-Industrial City: a Case 
Study of Housing in Newcastle upon Tyne 
working with John Pendlebury and Paola Michialino in collaboration with 
Newcastle City Council. 

The project starts from the premise that the physical legacies of 
industrial era housing stock are important in forming the character of the 
landscapes of northern urban England. The student will address the 
conceptual and methodological challenges of the characterisation of such 
housing and apply to the case of Newcastle upon Tyne. The concept of 
character will be examined and analysed, both in terms of its use 
historically and in more contemporary policy making. This will encompass 
both physical character and wider identities of place and culture. 
Existing methodologies for evaluating character drawn from architectural 
history, urban morphology and field techniques will be evaluated and 
synthesised to form an inter-disciplinary approach which will be employed 
in the case study. 

Newcastle represents an excellent locale for this study, with a rich and 
diverse legacy of industrial period housing from early industrialisation 
through to major, and varied, post-war welfare state housing. This is an 
important time to be undertaking this research. There is a new wave of 
interest in heritage that is focusing upon understanding the local 
distinctiveness of places and their significance in forming individual and 
community identities within the context of cultural change, and the role 
of characterisation methodologies in defining these characteristics. At 
the same time there is the potential of radical change, through the 
Government’s housing market renewal programme, which may lead to large-
scale clearances of housing. The result will be an academic study that 
will have a direct role in informing policy decisions over cultural 
significance (e.g. local listing, areas of townscape importance, 
conservation areas, Pathfinder housing market renewal). 

For further details and information on how to apply please visit 
http://www.apl.ncl.ac.uk/courses/studentships

Or contact [log in to unmask] 0191 222 6014 

Closing date for both applications is 26 May 2006