“Collections”: 5 fully funded Ph.D.s at the University of Glasgow,
including history of medicine and history of science projects in
collaboration with the University Archives, Special Collections, and The
Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.
NB: FOUR studentships are listed below, and each focuses on a different topic and historical time period.
The Leverhulme Trust: “Collections” Scholarships
Collections: an Enlightenment Pedagogy for the 21st Century
It is well known that in the three hundred years since the Enlightenment,
knowledge worldwide has made giant steps – but that at the same time, this
knowledge has become compartmentalised. Increasingly narrow specialisms
deliver insight and technological advances – at a price. Knowledge reflects
depth, but rarely, a breadth of understanding. All too easily, the various
disciplines of the modern academy lose touch with each other, when there
remains much that they might share. Clinicians, scientists, historians,
criminologists, curators and literary scholars, should and could share
knowledge, insight and methodology. The need for a holistic vision for the
academy is all the more pressing now, as researchers confront an
environment where advances in digitization and an accelerating global
connectivity has further increased the complexity and sheer number of
accessible collections, whether these are artefacts, data or other kinds of
‘collected’ material. In this context, what for example, might a clinician
learn from a criminologist or an art historian about the ethics of
provenance and questions of consent? Or how best do we use network theory
in relation to collections of literary novels? By drawing on the extensive
resources of the University of Glasgow, the City of Glasgow and established
national and international networks, Collections presents a re-imagining of
the Enlightenment ambition. Working in close collaboration with one
another, the Collections students will explore historical and contemporary
collections using quantitative and qualitative techniques derived from
Science, the Arts and Humanities; methodologies emerging from Big Data; and
analysis from within medical disciplines.
In session 2015-16 there will be 5 PhD projects, each attracting a doctoral
scholarship providing maintenance and fees (Home/EU rate only) at Research
Council rates:
1. Lord Kelvin, Geographer:
This project will consider the work of Lord Kelvin from the perspective of
his role in the development of a range of scientific instruments for use in
studies of earth processes. It will examine Kelvin’s work on submarine
telegraphy, deep-sea sounding, magnetic variation and marine navigation,
and his contributions to tidal studies, to theories of glacier movement and
to polar ice-cap and sea level relations. The project will use the
scientific instrument collections in the Hunterian’s Kelvin collection and
his archives in the University’s Special Collections. The project will
improve understandings of the relations between the geographical and
physical sciences in the 19th century. It will also contribute to debates
regarding the role of place in the production of scientific knowledge and
instrumental practice, and will improve understandings of the The
Hunterian’s instrument collection.
This project belongs to the Material thematic cluster. The successful
candidate will be supervised by Dr Simon Naylor (Human Geography) and Dr
Nicky Reeves (Curator of Scientific and Medical History Collections in the
The Hunterian).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are
encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first
instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the
following documentation:
The application form which includes a personal statement in which you
should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you
a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
Your CV
Your degree transcripts
Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April
2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School
Administrator.
2. Syphilis: exploring the emotional history of a pandemic
The remarkable collection of pamphlets on syphilis from their earliest
appearances in 1495 to 1820, held in the University of Glasgow’s Special
Collections and recently made more accessible through an analytical catalog
will support an investigation into understanding the medical, social, and
emotional history of the disease over three-hundred years. This history
crosses major medical and intellectual divides-Renaissance humanism, the
Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the ‘decline of magic’, the
Enlightenment, and the surgical and epidemiological breakthroughs of the
late eighteenth century. The current historiography suggests that progress
in medicine from the seventeenth-century scientific revolution to the late
nineteenth-century ‘laboratory revolution’ made this and other pandemic
diseases progressively more comprehensible and thus less prone to placing
blame on outsiders and persecuting the victims of disease. But syphilis’
cultural toxicity spread in the opposite direction. From the late sixteenth
century to the nineteenth century and beyond, women became increasingly the
targets of blame and the syphilitic of both sexes were punished for
acquiring this sexually transmitted disease. Glasgow’s collection of 246
pamphlets on syphilis will serve as the gateway to explore the emotional
life of this disease in broader contexts including that of other pandemic
diseases in early modern Europe and the New World.
This project belongs to the Material thematic cluster. The successful
candidate will be supervised by Prof Samuel Cohn (Medieval History) and Dr
Sarah Cockram (History).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are
encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first
instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the
following documentation:
The application form which includes a personal statement in which you
should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you
a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
Your CV
Your degree transcripts
Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April
2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School
Administrator.
3. William Hunter: anatomist to the artists
his project will explore and document Hunter’s collection of c.1000
drawings, almost all of which are of human and animal anatomy, and include
a series of works by major artists which has not previously been subjected
to serious scholarly investigation. The project would be art historical and
anatomical, looking at the drawings as scientific documents and especially
as records of specific dissections. Some of the famous anatomists
(Vesalius, Larche, Cowper, and Cheselden) whose dissections are represented
in the drawings pre-date Hunter. Some of the illustrations belonged to
Hunter’s mentor James Douglas, but many of them were commissioned by Hunter
himself. The project will relate the drawings to all other anatomical
material in Hunter’s collections, including anatomical books, paintings and
anatomical specimens, seeking to contextualise Hunter’s activities and
understand the anatomical themes represented by the collections and the
insights they provided.
This project belongs to the Material thematic cluster. The successful
candidate will be supervised by Mr Peter Black (Curator of The Hunterian)
and Dr Stuart Mcdonald (Life Sciences/Human Biology).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are
encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first
instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the
following documentation:
The application form which includes a personal statement in which you
should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you
a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
Your CV
Your degree transcripts
Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April
2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School
Administrator.
4. Privacy: past, present and future
This project will analyse personal privacy in the context of (r)evolutions
in methods for the collection, recording and sharing of medical information
and samples. Such changes require the development of new regulatory
frameworks to govern collections, which, in turn, impact on understandings
of power, control and trust within, and beyond, patient-professional
relations. Issues covered will include anonymisation/pseudonymisation of
personal data; perceptions of public benefits and private commercial
interests resulting from researchers having access to collections of
personal information; and informed consent – especially regarding future
uses of biological/genetic material held in longitudinal biobanks and
personal information stored in databases.
This project belongs to the Ethical thematic cluster. The successful
candidate will be supervised by Prof Matthew Walters (Institute of
Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences) and Dr Angus Ferguson (Economic &
Social History).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are
encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first
instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the
following documentation:
The application form which includes a personal statement in which you
should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you
a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
Your CV
Your degree transcripts
Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April
2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School
Administrator.
5. The ‘Glasgow effect’: a re-evaluation
The concept of the ‘Glasgow Effect’ – the understanding that population
health and life expectancy appear to have a significantly negative
correlation to living in Glasgow (in a sense that cannot simply be related
to particular demographics or social conditions) – has previously been
evidenced and interpreted through conventional resources. Working with
collected data from a newly devised questionnaire from Glasgow’s Urban Big
Data Centre this project, in collaboration with the Glasgow Centre of
Population Health, will employ new computational models and social science
methodologies to map and interpret the ‘Glasgow Effect’ and identify
possible solutions that would improve health outcomes. With access to a new
Social Sciences Research Hub based in the East End of Glasgow – a project
initiated and supported by the University of Glasgow – the student working
on this project will have access to a comprehensive range of data and will
also have opportunities for direct community engagement.
This project belongs to the Conceptual thematic cluster. The successful
candidate will be supervised by Mr Des McNulty (Social & Political
Sciences).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are
encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first
instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the
following documentation:
The application form which includes a personal statement in which you
should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you
a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
Your CV
Your degree transcripts
Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April
2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School
Administrator.