The Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) and the National Library of Scotland (NLS) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2023, awarded by the Scottish Cultural Heritage Consortium under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.
This doctoral project will examine how libraries collect and present the publications of refugees, asylum seekers and other displaced people, and will explore whether libraries might play more active roles in supporting publishing by refugees and other minority and minoritised communities.
The project will be jointly supervised by Janneke Adema (Associate Professor Digital Media) and Judith Fathallah (Research Fellow) at the CPC and Patrick Hart (Curator, Scottish Communities and Organisations) and Sarah Ames (Digital Scholarship Librarian) at the NLS. It is supported by the CDP Consortium Cohort Development Programme.
The student will spend time with both the CPC and the NLS and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK.
The studentship is open to both UK and international applicants.
The CPC and the NLS are keen to encourage applications from the widest range of candidates and particularly welcome those currently underrepresented in the doctoral student cohort, including those with lived experience of forced displacement and migration.
To find out more about the studentship, to make an enquiry, or to apply, please visit the announcement on Coventry University’s website.
Project Overview
With 100 million people displaced globally, collecting and conserving refugees’ writings and making them accessible and visible has never been more important. Examining their historical biases and silences has led libraries to revise their curatorial practices and collection development policies. Yet publishing by displaced people still presents libraries with significant challenges and raises profound questions regarding their purpose and role.
One reason refugees and other migrants may be under-represented in libraries’ collections is that they have been excluded from access to the resources required to publish. These include money, time, cultural capital, and certain language skills and technical know-how. Libraries traditionally see their function as being to collect, conserve and make available publications, rather than to influence the publishing landscape. Yet driven by concerns to make scholarship more equitable and diverse, and alarm over the consequences of some profit-driven models of scholarly communication, libraries are recognising that they do shape that landscape – as subscribers, funders, publishers, and platform and infrastructure providers. These concerns often echo those informing libraries’ responses to refugees and other minoritised groups.
This project asks what kind of roles libraries should play in relation to publishing by displaced people. How do libraries collect, present and represent refugees’ writings and experiences, and how have they done so historically? Do libraries have a responsibility to make publishing more accessible for under-represented communities? What lessons might be learnt from the new forms of digital publishing developed by movements for open scholarship? How might these be adapted for non-academic communities? How might this relate to existing collection development and curatorial practices? And what are the practical, theoretical and ethical implications?
The project focuses on this cluster of research questions while heeding Angela Davis’ warning that ‘”migrant” and “refugee” don’t represent individuals or groups or communities [but] state regulated relations of governance’. To explore the relationship between libraries, publishing and displaced people, it brings together the expertise of three organisations: the CPC’s expertise in new models of experimental small-scale publishing (including scholar-led and library publishing); the Scottish Refugee Council’s tradition of supporting refugees’ cultural aspirations; and the NLS’s curatorial expertise and experience of the challenges involved in collecting and presenting refugee publishing.
Through this project we hope to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of libraries’ roles in a changing publishing landscape. It may also show how libraries can support publishing beyond academia, and lead to enhanced opportunities for the under-represented and marginalised communities. The project will also look to develop recommendations as to how libraries can support the needs of displaced people while addressing biases and the need to decolonise.
Benefits and Opportunities
The studentship offers the opportunity to combine academic training with practice-based experience and research in a national library, and to gain a range of transferable professional skills.
The successful candidate will be registered with the Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) at Coventry University. The CPC is an innovative transdisciplinary institution that brings together postdigital media theorists, practitioners, activists and artists from more than 15 countries speaking more than 20 languages. All researchers at Coventry University (from PhD to Professor) are part of the Doctoral College and Centre for Research Capability and Development, which provides support with high-quality training and career development activities.
At the National Library of Scotland the student will become part of an active group of collaborative doctoral researchers and benefit from staff-level access to the Library’s collections, resources and in-house training and development opportunities. CDP students can also take advantage of a dedicated programme of CDP Cohort Development events delivered in tandem with the other museums, galleries and heritage organisations affiliated with the AHRC CDP scheme.
Funding
The studentship covers full tuition fees and provides a stipend to cover living costs as well as additional support. For full details please see Coventry University’s announcement, here.
Candidate specification
❧ A bachelor’s (honours) degree in a relevant discipline/subject area with a minimum classification of 2:1 and a minimum mark of 60% in the project element (or equivalent), or an equivalent award from an overseas institution.
❧ The potential to engage in innovative research and to complete the PhD within 4 years
❧ An adequate proficiency in English must be demonstrated by applicants whose first language is not English. The general requirement is a minimum overall IELTS Academic score of 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in each of the four sections, or the TOEFL iBT test with a minimum overall score of 95 with a minimum of 21 in each of the four sections.
For further details please see Coventry University’s announcement, here.
How to apply
To find out more about the studentship, to make an enquiry, or to apply, please visit the announcement on Coventry University’s website.
All applications require a covering letter and a 2000-word supporting statement showing how the applicant’s expertise and interests are relevant to the project.
The deadline for applications is 4 June 2023.