The Department of Religious Studies is pleased to announce an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) studentship offered in collaboration with the Magdalene Institutions: Archives and Oral History project, University College Dublin (UCD) and the National Women’s Council of Ireland, to begin autumn 2015. The project is titled ‘Cleansing Physical and Spiritual Dirt: Women’s Experiences of Working in Magdalene Laundries in Twentieth-Century Ireland’.
This project will undertake one of the first detailed analyses of archival and oral history material collected by the Irish Research Council-funded Magdalene Institutions project at University College Dublin. Through collaborative work with the National Women’s Council of Ireland, it is intended that the project will also contribute to a public briefing document about women’s experiences of life in the Laundries as well as educational materials to support the teaching of the history of the Laundries for secondary school students.
Applications for this studentship are welcome from anyone with a strong academic track record in a relevant discipline (e.g. social or cultural history, religious studies, Irish studies, sociology or gender studies) who is able to demonstrate a strong interest in the project focus as well as the range of skills necessary for this kind of collaborative project. Further details about the project, including how to apply for it may be downloaded as a PDF here:
www.kent.ac.uk/secl/files/magdelenes-phd-outline-person-specification.pdf
The Department of Religious Studies at Kent has an excellent track record of supervising AHRC CDA projects. Recent award-holders have developed national level training and public engagement events, won AHRC Skills Development Training Grants in their own right, held an AHRC International Placement Fellowship and a visiting doctoral fellowship at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. This project builds on an existing collaboration between the Department of Religious Studies at Kent and the Magdalene Institutions project at UCD that led to the production of a film about the Laundries for secondary school students that has since won a national Learning on Screen award by the British Universities Video and Film Council.
The studentship will run for three years (full-time equivalent) and will cover registration fees as well as an annual AHRC maintenance payment of £14,057. An additional payment of £1,000 per annum will also be made to the award-holder for living and project costs, as well as up to £350 per annum to cover travel costs for project meetings to be held in Dublin.
Under AHRC guidelines, only applicants who are UK citizens or who can demonstrate a relevant connection to the UK for a three year residency period prior to making this application may be eligible for the full fees and maintenance grant award. Applicants from EU countries who are not able to demonstrate this previous connection with the UK will be eligible only for a fees-only award. More detailed guidance on these eligibility criteria are available in the project application guidance.
The deadline for applications will be 5.00pm on Monday 3 August, 2015. Interviews for short-listed applicants will be in early to mid-June (date to be confirmed with shortlisted applicants).
Applications should be made by emailing a covering letter and accompanying CV to Jacqui Martlew, Postgraduate Admissions Officer, School of European Culture and Languages, at the University of Kent: seclpgadmin@kent.ac.uk
Further questions about this project can be discussed by contacting Professor Gordon Lynch at g.lynch@kent.ac.uk
For more details about the department, please see www.kent.ac.uk/secl/thrs