The Richard Hoggart Centre for Comparative Cultural Studies 1: Race and Surveillance in a Digital Age

Summary of Cluster
These scholarships will inaugurate the Richard Hoggart Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Hull. Richard Hoggart was a foundational figure in the discipline of cultural studies and spent over a decade of his early career teaching at the University of Hull. He wrote his most influential work, The Uses of Literacy, whilst teaching at Hull. The Richard Hoggart Centre for Comparative Studies aims to consolidate existing semi-formal collaborations between scholars at the University of Hull who are all engaged with the discipline of cultural studies. At its heart, cultural studies aims to examine cultural texts and forms as politically and socially embedded phenomena that can both inspire social justice and reinforce dominant ideologies. Cultural studies is a mixed-methods approach to the politics of culture, and incorporates elements of literary criticism, cultural theory, film studies, education studies, American Studies, cultural history and critical theory (among other disciplines). The successful candidates for these scholarships will be expected to play a central role in both the administration and intellectual life of the Hoggart Centre

Summary of PhD Project 1
Race and Surveillance in a Digital Age

We invite proposals for PhD projects that examine the cultural reception of digital surveillance practices and/or the impact of digital surveillance practices upon ethnic minority communities. Increasingly, our data is being used as a means of social sorting, making discriminations among populations that often reinforce existing patterns of inequality. The successful candidate will join a team of researchers interested in the cultural representation and reception of digital surveillance practices and will be involved in the curation and organisation of the Hull-based “Digital Dystopias” festival, which uses cultural texts to explore and provoke public discussion about the impact of technology upon society. A knowledge of critical race theory and surveillance studies is desired but not essential. This scholar will be supervised primarily by American Studies and Film Studies members of the Hoggart Centre, although interdisciplinary and mixed-methods approaches to the subject of race, surveillance and its representation in cultural texts/forms is encouraged.

Essential Criteria:
Applicants should have at least a 2.1 undergraduate degree in a relevant field – see the PhD scholarships above for further details. A 1st class undergraduate degree or Masters level qualification is desireable.

PhD students at the University of Hull follow modules for research and transferable skills development and gain a Masters level Certificate, or Diploma, in Research Training, in addition to their research degree.

Successful applicants will be informed of the award as soon as possible and by 2nd April 2018 at the latest.