The Department of Archaeology invites applications for a PhD studentship linked to a Leverhulme International Professorship awarded to Professor Emma Waterton. The successful applicant will be based in the Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre at the University of York, where they will become part of a collaborative team working on six dynamic and interrelated ‘axes’ of research: (1) Inclusions/Exclusions; (2) Colonial Legacies; (3) Mobilities and Materialities; (4) Anthropocene Encounters; (5) Cultures of Survivance and (6) Biophilic Relations.
The advertised PhD studentship will connect with Axis 4, “Anthropocene Encounters”. With this Axis, we are interested in combining broad landscape histories with a sensitivity towards places of heritage, things and processes on the ground in order to understand - figuratively, emotionally and cognitively - what is happening to our world. Drawing on critical and imaginative thinking, research connected to this Axis will attempt to lay the intellectual groundwork necessary for centering the Anthropocene within heritage debates. Moreover, it will critically and fundamentally rethink our relationship with our pasts, present and futures, and problematise our received notions of what constitutes, or perhaps more importantly what does not constitute, heritage.
Although the specifics of the research will be open for discussion once the successful PhD candidate is in post, we invite applicants to propose a research project that aligns with the theme of “Anthropocene Encounters”. This might connect with, but is not limited to, one or more of the following area/s:
- understanding new forms of heritage-making that emerge from the production of techno-fossils and what these mean for communities;
- re/theorising the sociality of oceans, the legacies of living on (and in) a watery planet, and the transformative role of oceans in Anthropocene futures;
- expanding Anthropocene thinking (especially ideas of non-human agency) through critical engagement with Indigenous scholarship;
- examining the politics of heritage with marginalised and climate-refugee communities in global contexts;
- challenging extractivist logics in the field of heritage;
- exploring how heritage management processes might give way to more fluid, creative and experimental understandings of heritage and conservation practice in the Anthropocene;
- developing new modes of public engagement that can be used to prompt a more radical debate about the relationships between heritage and the Anthropocene.
Research Proposal: please provide a description of no more than 1500 words of your proposed research project. Include provisional research questions (or aims), a brief literature review that contextualises your project’s focus, an indication of your proposed theoretical framework and an indication of proposed methods.
The successful candidate’s primary task will be researching, writing, and defending their thesis. Additional outcomes will include academic publications and presentations, such as the co-delivery of papers at international conferences, the co-convening of at least one conference session and resultant publication/s, and the co-authoring of peer-reviewed journal articles. The successful candidate will be expected to be based in York.
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