Home » Jobs and Opportunities » Funded Collaborative PhD opportunity under the AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award scheme

Funded Collaborative PhD opportunity under the AHRC Doctoral Landscape Award scheme

Project overview

The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (RGS-IBG) cares for hundreds of thousands of colonial-era photographic images. Yet, these resources are largely underused. Through a pedagogy of student partnership informed by the ideas of educator Paulo Freire, this CDA will bring together archival, visual and material culture methods with the practical challenges of real archive collections through a case study of one of the RGS-IBG’s most significant photographic collections: the almost entirely overlooked work of Elizabeth Wilhelmina Ness (1881-1962). The doctoral researcher will use this material to develop an innovative pedagogical approach that fosters a critical interrogation of this troubling photographic heritage, bringing Ness’ work into dialogue with undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Westminster. By examining and showcasing how the plurality of perspectives of students can bring more diverse narratives and interdisciplinary perspectives into a co-produced reinterpretation of colonial-era records, the project aims to formulate a new model of teaching and learning that will be applicable to the pedagogical mission of both cultural institutions and universities.

Application deadline: 30 April 2026 (for a start date of 1 October 2026).

Full details here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/ahrc-doctoral-landscape-award/collaborative-research-as-pedagogical-method-reinterpreting-photographic-collections-at-the-rgs-ibg