Dear all,

Please see and circulate the below details of AHRC funded PhD projects in the Department of Geography at Durham University for 2017-18 entry. Please also note the unhelpfully quick turn around on this!

Best wishes,

Lizzie Richardson

As part of its Industrial Strategy, the government recently announced a National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF) to support an additional 1000 PhD studentships to start on 1 October 2017. The Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership (NBDTP) and Northumbria-Sunderland Consortium in Art and Design (N-SC) have jointly secured 12 awards, funded by the AHRC, to support research in the two areas identified by AHRC as the focus of these awards: Design and The Creative Sector.

Further Information about the competition is now live on the Northern Bridge website at:

http://www.northernbridge.ac.uk/studentships/npif/

There are two ways of applying for one of the twelve studentships on offer.

First, you can apply via the prospective supervisor-led route which are proposed PhDs linked to predesigned projects.
The Department of Geography at Durham have two potential projects for which we are looking for interested applicants. 

1)	Developing Dynamic Digital Skills for Creative Economies
To be supervised by Dr Lizzie Richardson  [log in to unmask]
and Professor Paul Langley [log in to unmask]

Research Partner:  Tech for Life
Summary:
This project responds to the digital skills shortage that has been identified in the UK in the joint DCMS and BIS report ‘Digital skills for the UK economy’ (2016). Specifically, the project will focus on the development of the dynamic digital skills that are necessary for creative economies to flourish and prosper. Typically, digital skills are understood in somewhat formal, narrow and individual terms, aligned with the scientific and technical qualifications and occupations of coders and data analysts, utilised for example in the IT services and digital marketing sectors. What is frequently overlooked is that the innovative use of digital technologies for production, distribution and consumption in creative economies mobilizes a somewhat different and dynamic skill-set. This combines scientific and technical know-how with open-ended improvisation, and often features collaborative activities such as ‘hacking’ and ‘making’. Indeed, such dynamic digital skills are to the fore in the creative economies of software and videogame design. Accordingly, projects will address the following research questions:

1. How are digital skills narrated and understood by different stakeholders (e.g. commercial organisations, educational institutions, professional associations, community groups)?
2. Which different knowledges (e.g. technical, craft-based, scientific, artistic) are presently performed in digital skills training programs?
3. To what extent can training programs be tailored to develop the dynamic digital skills necessary for successful creative economies?

These questions will be addressed through different models of provision such as private courses (such as outsourced training for employees); tech community meet-ups; teacher training events; young peoples’ coding clubs.

2)	Marketising the Museum: the value collections bring to commodities
To be supervised by Professor Mike Crang [log in to unmask]

Summary:
Museums work to preserve and sacralise objects. They thus take them out of market exchange and bestow cultural value upon them. This is an especially notable process with the preservation of ‘everyday life’ or ‘commercial culture’ which thus create what Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimmblett calls a genre error. However museums are increasingly eager to reconvert these values into market forms – one means being the development of replica, and their sale. The theme here then is the ‘nostalgia market’ or ‘retrochic’ in goods that have passed from fashionable to outmodes, to revalorised. The project seeks to examine the role of cultural institutions in those revalorisations. Museums themselves are increasingly interested in ways they can marketise their archives, parlay cultural value into market values, create ‘added value’ and capture that. The project would examine the role of museum shops and nostalgic retailers in selling ‘nostalgia goods’. It would look at the associations that enable such goods and objects to gain market and culture value? 

1. Are certain classes of artefacts more productive of these associations than others?
2. How does this relate beyond the museum to other retailers and the use of historic merchandise either directly for sale or the creation of ambience?
3. What is the effect of historic ambience on the valuing of other goods not directly linked to museum holdings?


Second, you can  take the  Applicant-led route whereby you develop your own project with a prospective supervisor. Applicants must e-mail the relevant lead academic contact with an expression of interest by Wednesday 7 June at 5pm.

The deadline for completed applications is Friday 30 June at 5:00pm, those applicants who having consulted supervisors are allowed to proceed with an application, must complete Section A of the application form by Monday 19 June at 5pm.