History: AHRC Funded PhD Studentship: ’Redeeming Death’: Mortality, Portraiture, and the Quest for Salvation in Tudor England and Wales

The National Portrait Gallery London and the College of Arts and Humanities at Swansea University are inviting applications for an AHRC-funded PhD studentship for three years from 1 October 2016. The project will take the National Portrait Gallery’s unique collection of Tudor portraits as its key source for investigating sixteenth-century responses to mortality, self-fashioning as reflected in Elizabethan portraiture, and their relation to theological precepts and spiritual coping strategies developed in the context of the English Reformation. The project will be innovative in its interdisciplinary approach, and by its potential for transnational comparison within Christian Europe. The visual evidence will be studied in conjunction with a variety of literary sources primarily from the Gallery’s Heinz archive and library and Swansea University’s library and collections. While pursuing his/her own original line of inquiry, the student will be encouraged to engage with an agreed set of research questions to explore the subject in its historical and art historical context.

The candidate will be supervised jointly by Dr Regina Pörtner, Department of History, Swansea University, and Dr Tarnya Cooper, Curatorial Director at the National Portrait Gallery. The successful student should expect to spend extended periods of Years 1 and 2 at the National Portrait Gallery. He/she will be integrated into, and supported by, the research community at the NPG, and be part of the UK-wide CDP scheme which provides opportunities for networking, dissemination, and advanced research training. The student will benefit from dedicated postgraduate and curatorial training programs that will equip her/him with the requisite research skills for this project, and provide valuable experience in heritage sector work.

Eligibility

Applicants should have at least a 2.1 undergraduate degree and a Master’s degree, to be completed no later than 30 September 2016, in a relevant Arts and Humanities subject, preferably in History or Art History.

Candidates should mention any skills or experience they may have in interpreting historic visual evidence, knowledge of languages, IT skills, and working with heritage sector institutions in their application.

To be eligible for a full award (stipend and fees), you must have:

Settled status in the UK, meaning there are no restrictions on how long you can stay.
Been ’ordinarily resident’ in the UK for three years prior to the start of the studentship grant. This means you must have been normally residing in the UK (apart from temporary or occasional absences).
Not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education.
To be eligible for a fees only award, you:

must be ordinarily resident in an EU member state, in the same way as UK students must be ordinarily resident in the UK.
For more details please see the AHRC funding guide: http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/documents/guides/research-funding-guide/