Applications are now open for a PhD studentship on the Society’s Collections, as part of our Collaborative Doctoral Awards programme. The project, due to start in October 2021, will explore the role of the West India Regiments in projects of circum-Atlantic colonial science, particularly exploration, botany and ethnology, in the 19th century British Empire.
Based at the University of Warwick in partnership with the Society and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the project sits at the interface of histories of science, empire and the military. The West India Regiments occupy a unique place in the history of the British Empire, in that they were a regular part of the British army, but were almost entirely comprised of men of African descent. As such, the project seeks to contribute to the decolonisation of scholarly collections and academic knowledge.
The project will draw extensively on the collections of both the Society and the Royal Botanic Gardens, as well as others including the National Army Museum and The National Archives, plus archives in Jamaica and Barbados, which were the principal headquarters of the 1st and 2nd West India Regiments respectively. The successful applicant will also benefit from access to the Wiley Digital Archives platform, which provides searchable online access to a large proportion of the Society’s Collections.
The studentship is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Science Museums and Archives Consortium Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. It will be supervised by Professor David Lambert and Dr James Poskett at the University of Warwick and by Dr Catherine Souch and Dr Sarah L. Evans at the Society, with additional support from Kiri Ross-Jones at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
The deadline for applications is Monday 1 March.
Find out more about the project and how to apply.
Applications are also open for a project focusing on the history, use, and legacy of systems of orthography (the conventions governing the spelling of place names) used at the Society from 1830-1919. The project will commence in September 2021 and the deadline for applications is Monday 8 February. Find out more.
Over the last 15 years we have hosted 14 PhD students carrying out collaborative research on our Collections, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Find out more about the Collaborative Doctoral Awards.