Learning from the past – exploring historical archives to inform future activities

Project Description
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) CDA Studentships 2016

PhD studentships are offered at the University of Liverpool in partnership with Staffordshire Record Office:
• The first examines the changing nature of drainage, water-meadows and flood risk management, exploring how landscape drainage has changed within the region, its impact on local communities and on the nature of two key landscape uses: water meadows and flood risk management.
• The second considers the lessons learned from past droughts, focusing on societal responses to past events and explores how societies have challenged their risk to and from drought by modification of the activities undertaken, and through modification of landscape practice.

Both studentships will involve research alongside community volunteer researchers according to participatory models. Working together the students and volunteers will enrich the archive catalogue with description that will allow researchers at all levels to access archival material previously unused for this area of research. In revisiting the archival materials the studentships will also develop a framework for identifying potentially relevant resources without recataloguing the collection, providing a toolkit facilitating future environmental research.

These Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) CDA studentships will contribute to scholarly research in environmental history, archival studies, and landscape change and management. In a cultural, intellectual sense the work will afford important insights into how individuals and societies have been affected by, coped with and conceptualized water within their environments. This project would permit development of a toolkit which will facilitate environmental research at archives nationally without undertaking full catalogue reassessment, addressing recent recognition that archives need to address new academic needs and to address different research interests. Both the research and the outputs will contribute to community engagement with archival materials and the key research themes.

More details can be found on the University of Liverpool, Department of Geography and Planning and School of History, Postgraduate Research webpages. In addition to the UoL supervisors, supervision will also be received from Staffordshire Record Office.

For further details and to apply: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/geography-and-planning/studentships/physical-geography/learningfromthepastexploringhistoricalarchivestoinformfutureactiviti.html

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to interview.

Application Deadline: 29th of March, 2016. Interviews to be held: 8 April 2016

The applicant will have a first class or 2:1 at undergraduate degree (essential) with preferably a Masters degree, for these studentships a wide background of fields may be appropriate, including archival studies, archaeology, geography or history. Desirable characteristics will include: experience of archival research; understanding of basic geographical nomenclature and processes; landscape history, knowledge of Staffordshire and experience of working with volunteer groups.

Candidates must satisfy AHRC's academic and residential eligibility requirements and be UK / EU citizens who have been resident in the UK for three years. Further information on eligibility available at AHRC web site.

“The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funds world-class, independent researchers in a wide range of subjects: ancient history, modern dance, archaeology, digital content, philosophy, English literature, design, the creative and performing arts, and much more. This financial year the AHRC will spend approximately £98m to fund research and postgraduate training in collaboration with a number of partners. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please go to: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk”.

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