“Collections”: five fully funded Ph.D.s at the University of Glasgow, including history of medicine and history of science projects in collaboration with the University Archives, Special Collections, and The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.
The Leverhulme Trust: “Collections” Scholarships
Collections: an Enlightenment Pedagogy for the 21st Century
It is well known that in the three hundred years since the Enlightenment, knowledge worldwide has made giant steps – but that at the same time, this knowledge has become compartmentalised. Increasingly narrow specialisms deliver insight and technological advances – at a price. Knowledge reflects depth, but rarely, a breadth of understanding. All too easily, the various disciplines of the modern academy lose touch with each other, when there remains much that they might share. Clinicians, scientists, historians, criminologists, curators and literary scholars, should and could share knowledge, insight and methodology. The need for a holistic vision for the academy is all the more pressing now, as researchers confront an environment where advances in digitization and an accelerating global connectivity has further increased the complexity and sheer number of accessible collections, whether these are artefacts, data or other kinds of ‘collected’ material. In this context, what for example, might a clinician learn from a criminologist or an art historian about the ethics of provenance and questions of consent? Or how best do we use network theory in relation to collections of literary novels? By drawing on the extensive resources of the University of Glasgow, the City of Glasgow and established national and international networks, Collections presents a re-imagining of the Enlightenment ambition. Working in close collaboration with one another, the Collections students will explore historical and contemporary collections using quantitative and qualitative techniques derived from Science, the Arts and Humanities; methodologies emerging from Big Data; and analysis from within medical disciplines.
In session 2015-16 there will be 5 PhD projects, each attracting a doctoral scholarship providing maintenance and fees (Home/EU rate only) at Research Council rates.
1. Lord Kelvin, Geographer:
This project will consider the work of Lord Kelvin from the perspective of his role in the development of a range of scientific instruments for use in studies of earth processes. It will examine Kelvin’s work on submarine telegraphy, deep-sea sounding, magnetic variation and marine navigation, and his contributions to tidal studies, to theories of glacier movement and to polar ice-cap and sea level relations. The project will use the scientific instrument collections in the Hunterian’s Kelvin collection and his archives in the University’s Special Collections. The project will improve understandings of the relations between the geographical and physical sciences in the 19th century. It will also contribute to debates regarding the role of place in the production of scientific knowledge and instrumental practice, and will improve understandings of the The Hunterian’s instrument collection.
This project belongs to the Material thematic cluster. The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Simon Naylor (Human Geography) and Dr Nicky Reeves (Curator of Scientific and Medical History Collections in the The Hunterian).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the following documentation:
- The application form which includes a personal statement in which you should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
- Your CV
- Your degree transcripts
- Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April 2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School Administrator.
2. Syphilis: exploring the emotional history of a pandemic
The remarkable collection of pamphlets on syphilis from their earliest appearances in 1495 to 1820, held in the University of Glasgow’s Special Collections and recently made more accessible through an analytical catalogue will support an investigation into understanding the medical, social, and emotional history of the disease over three-hundred years. This history crosses major medical and intellectual divides–Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the ‘decline of magic’, the Enlightenment, and the surgical and epidemiological breakthroughs of the late eighteenth century. The current historiography suggests that progress in medicine from the seventeenth-century scientific revolution to the late nineteenth-century ‘laboratory revolution’ made this and other pandemic diseases progressively more comprehensible and thus less prone to placing blame on outsiders and persecuting the victims of disease. But syphilis’ cultural toxicity spread in the opposite direction. From the late sixteenth century to the nineteenth century and beyond, women became increasingly the targets of blame and the syphilitic of both sexes were punished for acquiring this sexually transmitted disease. Glasgow’s collection of 246 pamphlets on syphilis will serve as the gateway to explore the emotional life of this disease in broader contexts including that of other pandemic diseases in early modern Europe and the New World.
This project belongs to the Material thematic cluster. The successful candidate will be supervised by Prof Samuel Cohn (Medieval History) and Dr Sarah Cockram (History).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the following documentation:
- The application form which includes a personal statement in which you should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
- Your CV
- Your degree transcripts
- Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April 2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School Administrator.
3. William Hunter: anatomist to the artists
This project will explore and document Hunter’s collection of c.1000 drawings, almost all of which are of human and animal anatomy, and include a series of works by major artists which has not previously been subjected to serious scholarly investigation. The project would be art historical and anatomical, looking at the drawings as scientific documents and especially as records of specific dissections. Some of the famous anatomists (Vesalius, Larche, Cowper, and Cheselden) whose dissections are represented in the drawings pre-date Hunter. Some of the illustrations belonged to Hunter’s mentor James Douglas, but many of them were commissioned by Hunter himself. The project will relate the drawings to all other anatomical material in Hunter’s collections, including anatomical books, paintings and anatomical specimens, seeking to contextualise Hunter’s activities and understand the anatomical themes represented by the collections and the insights they provided.
This project belongs to the Material thematic cluster. The successful candidate will be supervised by Mr Peter Black (Curator of The Hunterian) and Dr Stuart Mcdonald (Life Sciences/Human Biology).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the following documentation:
- The application form which includes a personal statement in which you should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
- Your CV
- Your degree transcripts
- Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April 2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School Administrator.
4. Privacy: past, present and future
This project will analyse personal privacy in the context of (r)evolutions in methods for the collection, recording and sharing of medical information and samples. Such changes require the development of new regulatory frameworks to govern collections, which, in turn, impact on understandings of power, control and trust within, and beyond, patient-professional relations. Issues covered will include anonymisation/pseudonymisation of personal data; perceptions of public benefits and private commercial interests resulting from researchers having access to collections of personal information; and informed consent – especially regarding future uses of biological/genetic material held in longitudinal biobanks and personal information stored in databases.
This project belongs to the Ethical thematic cluster. The successful candidate will be supervised by Prof Matthew Walters (Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences) and Dr Angus Ferguson (Economic & Social History).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the following documentation:
- The application form which includes a personal statement in which you should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
- Your CV
- Your degree transcripts
- Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April 2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School Administrator.
5. The ‘Glasgow effect’: a re-evaluation
The concept of the ‘Glasgow Effect’ – the understanding that population health and life expectancy appear to have a significantly negative correlation to living in Glasgow (in a sense that cannot simply be related to particular demographics or social conditions) – has previously been evidenced and interpreted through conventional resources. Working with collected data from a newly devised questionnaire from Glasgow’s Urban Big Data Centre this project, in collaboration with the Glasgow Centre of Population Health, will employ new computational models and social science methodologies to map and interpret the ‘Glasgow Effect’ and identify possible solutions that would improve health outcomes. With access to a new Social Sciences Research Hub based in the East End of Glasgow – a project initiated and supported by the University of Glasgow – the student working on this project will have access to a comprehensive range of data and will also have opportunities for direct community engagement.
This project belongs to the Conceptual thematic cluster. The successful candidate will be supervised by Mr Des McNulty (Social & Political Sciences).
Candidates interested in applying for funded PhD study on this project are encouraged to make informal contact with the Supervisor(s) in the first instance.
Candidates wishing to submit an application should prepare and submit the following documentation:
- The application form which includes a personal statement in which you should detail the particular attributes and/or achievements which make you a suitable candidate to undertake the proposed project
- Your CV
- Your degree transcripts
- Two references in support of your application
The closing date for receipt of complete applications is Friday, 3 April 2015. Applications should be emailed to Adeline Callander, Graduate School Administrator.