Historic Houses & University of Oxford: AHRC-funded DPhil now open for applications
Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award offered jointly by Historic Houses and the University of Oxford, entitled Populism, permutation and persuasion: Country house politics after 1950.
Subject to standard AHRC eligibility criteria, the studentship will cover tuition fees at home/EU rate and provide a maintenance award at RCUK rates for a maximum of 3 years of full-time doctoral study from October 2018.
This DPhil is concerned with the role of the independently owned country house in political and cultural discourse from the 1950s to the present day. It builds on earlier work by Peter Mandler (1997), John Cornforth (1999), Patrick Wright (2009) and Ruth Adams (2013) and aims to extend this field through interrogation of different public policy approaches to the fate of country house heritage in diverse political contexts. The study will go to the heart of current policy debates about the nature and meaning of historic house heritage, its significance and public value, and the future of the ‘public private partnership’ between owners and the state in its long-term care.
There have been numerous studies of the evolution of heritage as a concern of public policy, but to date there has not been a comprehensive academic examination of the politics of the independently owned historic house in recent times. This DPhil will provide for an in-depth case study of the evolution of Historic Houses, within the heritage sector context of amenity societies and charitable organisations, as a force for political influence. It will demonstrate the continued significance of historic house heritage in the 21st century from multiple, if sometimes contested, perspectives. For more information on this DPhil project, and to submit an application, click here.
The deadline for applications is midday on Friday 9 March 2018.
Informal enquiries relating to the project can be directed to Dr Oliver Cox at University of Oxford (oliver.cox@humanities.ox.ac.uk) and Emma Robinson at Historic Houses (emma.robinson@hha.org.uk).