-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Divall 

Food-miles: the imaginings, politics and practices of food distribution in
the UK, ca 1920-1975
Fully Funded PhD studentship

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD working on food distribution
networks between 1920 and 1975. This studentship is one of eight
fully-funded awards made by the newly-established Collaborative Doctoral
Partnership managed by the Science Museum Group. The project will be
supervised by Colin Divall (University of York) and Ed Bartholomew (National
Railway Museum, York). The studentship, which is funded for three years
full-time equivalent, will begin in September 2013. 

The Studentship

How and what we eat is high on public and political agenda. While the
particulars are new, the underlying issues are long-standing.
Industrialization of the UK's food supply from the late-C18th enabled
unprecedented levels of urbanization and population growth but destroyed
local, regional and even national sources, encouraging consumption based
more on price than nutritional value. Today's globalized food-chains can
deliver huge amounts of high-quality food: but they also allow unscrupulous
suppliers to escape the scrutiny of national and even international
regulators.

This project explores one critical shift in Britain's food supply in the
last century: the change over the roughly half-century from 1920 from a
rail- to a road-based system of distribution within the UK: from port to
market, from farm yard to manufacturer, town shop or supermarket. This
change was perhaps not inevitable: while the railways' inter-war battle with
road hauliers reflected traditional concerns such as price, reliability and
security, neither service provider was able to demonstrate a clear
advantage. Hence there was considerable scope to persuade consignors; the
railways' interest in marketing passenger traffic had some purchase with
regard to goods. How did the railway companies imagine, market and deliver
the distribution of food between the world wars? Railway publicity suggests
that the high profile given to food distribution was partly an attempt to
win public and political opinion to the companies' case for more regulatory
freedom. And how did road hauliers (including own-account operators like the
food retailer Sainsbury's) respond to such initiatives before 1939? What did
consumers think?

The Second World War is sometimes portrayed as a temporary period of
reprieve for rail distribution before the 'inevitable' victory of road
haulage. But this project might explore whether the war and the following
decade of austerity prevented the railways acting soon enough on pre-war
ideas about how to handle food. It will also complement existing studies of
British Railways' attempts to reform freight services from the 1950s by
analysing the particularities of food distribution. While exogenous factors
such as better lorries, state-funded improvements to roads (notably
motorways) and wider changes in food retailing (especially processed foods
and just-in-time deliveries to supermarkets) arguably increasingly favoured
road distribution, BR continued to develop and market services targeted at
food suppliers and retailers until around the mid-1970s. How did BR work
with the food industry? Did Beeching-era ideas like Freightliner have any
role in the motorway age? Could the railways have kept more of the bulk
transport of imported foodstuffs? Did food manufacturers, wholesalers and
retailers drive innovations in food distribution, or did they adapt to
initiatives from the haulage industry? And how did the road and rail
operators 'sell' their competing notions of modern food supplies to
consumers and politicians? 

This is chiefly a qualitative study that will draw out the connections
between the imagining of food distribution systems, the politics of building
food chains, and the practices of using them in the period ca 1920-75.

How to Apply

Applicants must have a good undergraduate degree in history or other
relevant discipline, and should normally also hold a master's (or
equivalent) degree in an appropriate subject. A full statement of the AHRC's
criteria for academic and residency eligibility is available on the AHRC
website www.ahrc.ac.uk <http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/> . 

Applicants should submit a short curriculum vitae and a brief letter
outlining both their qualifications for the studentship and their ideas
about how the research might develop. This should be in the form of a single
MS Word, Open Office or PDF file no more than three pages in total, using a
typeface no smaller than 11 point. The names and contact details of two
academic referees should also be supplied. Applications should be sent to
Colin Divall at [log in to unmask]  to arrive no later than 12.00
Wednesday 12th June 2013. Applicants should not at this stage make a formal
application to the University of York.

Interviews for short-listed candidate will be held at the National Railway
Museum, York, in the morning of Friday 28th June 2013. 

For further information, please contact either of the project supervisors:
Colin Divall [log in to unmask] or Ed Bartholomew
[log in to unmask]