Voyagers All? The historic role of missionary societies in shaping children’s understanding of Britain’s place in the world. (WINGFIELDCU19cdpSMACNMM)

Following the 2012 acquisition by the National Maritime Museum of an important collection from the Council for World Mission (formerly the London Missionary Society), and its partial display in the new Pacific Encounters gallery in 2018, this collaborative PhD project will explore how missionary societies shaped the ways in which British children understood their role in the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

From card games featuring missionary stations, to collecting boxes in the shape of African houses and missionary ships, to suitcases of ethnographic items that were circulated to Sunday schools, this collection includes many of the artefacts and images through which children’s perceptions of the wider world were framed. This under-researched cache of primary material at the NMM provides a unique opportunity for a PhD student to explore the relationships between missionary texts and the artefacts, objects and images used to engage youthful audiences.

Scope for Moulding Project
The successful PhD candidate will work with objects, texts and images from a number of collections to develop a picture of the different ways in which missionary societies engaged with children across the British Isles, and how this changed over time. The intention of this project is that it could be undertaken by students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds across the humanities, including Archaeology, Anthropology, History, Geography, History of Science, History of Art and Education. Depending on the background and experience of the successful student, we anticipate that particular strands of research may become more or less prominent.

For further information, see: http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/study/phd-programme/cdp/nmm

For more information on the supervisor for this project, please go here: http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/people/academic-faculty/chris-wingfield

Type of programme: PhD

Project start date: October 2019

Mode of study: Full time/ part time

Entry requirements: Acceptable first degree - History, Geography, History of Science, History of Art, Archaeology, Anthropology, Education, Cultural Studies. The standard minimum entry requirement is 2:1. Masters or equivalent experience in a professional setting.

As part of your application you will need to include: a research statement of up to 1000 words, explaining why you are interested in studying for this PhD topic, what you would bring to the research and how you think you would take the project forward; a sample of writing, up to 3000 words, describing an object from the National Maritime Museum’s collections, and the ways this expresses a view of another part of the world.

This studentship is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) via a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Award between the National Maritime Museum and the Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU), University of East Anglia. The studentship is funded for 3 years (full-time) and pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home/EU rate for PhD degrees as well as full maintenance for UK citizens and residents only. The value of the maintenance stipend is around £15,559. The successful candidate will also have access to the Student Development Fund which allows an extension of up to 6 months to undertake related placements and training.