These Wellcome Trust-funded PhD studentships at Newcastle University, which form part of a larger project led by Professor Clare Bambra. Both studentships include 100% of home tuition fees, an annual stipend for 36 months, starting at £19,919 and rising incrementally, with additional funding available to cover research costs, conference fees, and engagement activities.
1: An historical perspective on the ‘north-south health divide’ and regional health inequalities
Closing deadline is 20 May 2022, and further details, including how to apply, are listed here. Queries should be directed in the first instance to Dr Vicky Long (Vicky.Long@newcastle.ac.uk)
Interested in the social history of health, and its relevance to contemporary problems? This PhD project will investigate the historical development, extent, experiences, and representations of regional health inequalities in England, focussing on the north-south divide. Applicants should include a proposal outlining how they would approach this project: you may wish to focus on periods where health inequalities came to the fore (e.g. nineteenth-century sanitary reform era, characterised by debates about industrialisation and health; the interwar era, when health improvement efforts were undercut by poverty and unemployment, and the early 1980s, when the Black Report drew attention to health inequalities, while deindustrialisation fuelled regional inequalities). Themes which may shape this research include social class, employment and working conditions, gender, and the body. A wide range of qualitative and quantitative sources could potentially be exploited for this research, including medical officer of health reports; archives of medical associations; regional health authority and council archival materials; epidemiological and demographic data; government records; newspapers, oral history re-use; medical journals and publications.
This is an exciting opportunity to complete a PhD while participating in a wider multidisciplinary Wellcome Trust funded project on regional health inequalities and the successful candidate will be expected to contribute to wider project team discussions and publications. Newcastle hosts a thriving multidisciplinary medical humanities network encompassing postgraduate researchers, and resources that may be useful for this research, including the Pybus Collection and the Donaldson (Sir Liam) Archive.
2: Place, space, health: representing the North-South divide in literature and culture
Closing date 31 May 2022, and further details, including how to apply, are listed here. Queries should be directed in the first instance to Dr Ella Dzelzainis (ella.dzelzainis@newcastle.ac.uk)
Interested in pursuing a PhD project examining the relation between place, space and health in literary/cultural representations of the North-South divide? This PhD studentship allows you to carve out your own area of investigation within a wider multidisciplinary Wellcome Trust funded project on regional health inequalities in England, focusing on the north-south divide. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to wider project team discussions and publications.
Applicants should include a proposal outlining how they would approach this project. We encourage you to think imaginatively about possible texts and topics. You may wish to focus on literary/cultural responses from (or about) a specific period when health inequalities came to the fore (eg, the Victorian Condition-of-England novel, interwar theatre of the Great Depression, the kitchen sink realism of the 1950s and 60s, realizations of the 1980s Miners’ Strike and industrial decline, or the more immediate cultural responses to the coronavirus pandemic in poetry, prose, film). Or you may wish your project to be driven by topic, such as the working-class experience, teenage mental and physical health, the literature of the North, a specific health condition (drug addiction? tuberculosis? depression?), literature and political activism, the representation of the ageing / infant / maternal / labouring body. A wide range of text sources could potentially be exploited for this research: fiction, poetry, drama, periodicals, graphic novels and zines, the TV serial, film.
Newcastle hosts a thriving multidisciplinary medical humanities network encompassing postgraduate researchers, and resources that may be useful for this research, including the nineteenth-century novel, contemporary literature and poetry collections in the Robinson Library.