PhD Scholarship in Russian: ’Diasporic and Transnational Russophone Networks in the UK: in Search for "Global Russians"’

The successful candidate will join an AHRC funded Open World Research Initiative (OWRI) research project led by Professor Lara Ryazanova-Clarke and titled ‘Diasporic and Transnational Russophone Networks in the UK: in Search for Global Russians’. The project feeds into a large multidisciplinary and multi-institutional research consortium “Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community” (CLDRC) headed by Professor Steven Hutchings of the University of Manchester and funded by a £4m grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

About the project

The ‘Global Russian’ is a new, emergent phenomenon of post-communist Russian cosmopolitanism espousing mobility of people, capital, language and culture. Russian diasporic and transcultural spaces and networks have grown to be increasingly prominent on the British multicultural and multilingual map – from dedicated Russian art auction houses, costume balls and festivals to hundreds of schools, societies, restaurants, clubs, shops and internet sites. The visibility of Russians in the UK has been augmented by the British media as their collective way of life has been intently observed and commented on in many documentaries and newspaper columns.

This pioneering project aims to capture the construction, articulation and commodification of the complex and multi-layered global Russian identities and identify the forms in which they interact with the local cultural and social life in the UK.

The successful candidate will explore one of the domains of global Russian identity production to be studied by the project (for e.g. business, education, the media etc.). Approaches may vary within the range of sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse studies, media and communication studies, and related fields.

The student will be offered the opportunity to deliver papers at the project’s and consortium’s conferences and colloquiums and to contribute chapters and/or articles to the project’s publications. The student will be expected to contribute to a broad range of activities and events within the project.

Applications for the PhD can be made via the online admissions portal at the url address given below.
http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/graduate-school/fees-and-funding/funding/phd-students/russian-phd-scholarship

Informal enquiries are welcome and should be directed to Prof Lara Ryazanova-Clarke: [Email Address Removed]