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Description

I am looking for a PhD student for a 4-year, fully funded, collaborative doctoral studentship with the Museum of the Home. Drop me a line if you are interested:

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship
Soundscapes of domesticity: music and lived experiences in non-elite English homes, 1780–1870

Queen Mary University of London with the Museum of the Home

The deadline for applications is: 1700 BST, Friday 23 May 2025
Interviews will be held during the week commencing: Monday 2 June 2025

Queen Mary University of London and the Museum of the Home are pleased to announce the availability of a fully-funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from October 2025 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) scheme. The studentship is funded for four years full-time, or up to eight years part-time.

Project overview and key aims
This project will explore the significance of music to lived experiences in non-elite English homes from the late-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Focusing on examples of different types of home from working-class cottages to petit-bourgeois households, lodging houses and institutional homes, it aims to provide understanding of the role played by music in relation to three key areas of domestic experience: (i) how music was entwined with embodied domestic practices and how it shaped expressive responses, emotional capacities and movement within the home; (ii) how music enabled and sustained familial relationships and other domestic social interactions; and (iii) how music connected homes to the places around them, and the commercial, social, cultural and political networks of the wider world.

Alongside a PhD thesis presenting original new research on a neglected area of historical and musicological investigation, the findings of the project will contribute to the Museum of the Home’s redisplay of its eighteenth and earlier nineteenth-century period rooms. The production of musical soundtracks for museum visitors and the organisation of a ‘Festival-Symposium’ on ‘Music in the Home’, with contributions from researchers, curators and musicians, will be additional outputs.

This project will be jointly supervised by Alastair Owens (Professor of Historical Geography), and Matthew Ingleby (Lecturer in Victorian Literature) at Queen Mary; and, at the Museum of the Home, by Louis Platman (Curator and Research Manager) and Gaynor Tutani (Creative Programming Officer).

For further details and the application process: https://lnkd.in/ebREJ_Wt


For enquiries, or an informal discussion, please contact Alastair Owens ( [email protected] )

Funding

The studentship is fully funded for four years full-time (or up to eight years part-time) under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. It covers tuition fees at the UKRI home rate (£5,006 for 2025/26), a full maintenance stipend (£22,780 for 2025/26 including London weighting), plus a CDP maintenance payment of £600/year. An additional travel and related expenses grant of up to £1,000 per year for four years is provided. International students receive the full maintenance award but

How to apply

Visit the provided project link for full application details. Prepare your application materials and submit by 17:00 BST, Friday 23 May 2025. For informal enquiries, contact Alastair Owens at [email protected]. Interviews will be held the week commencing 2 June 2025.

Requirements

Applicants should hold or expect to hold a good undergraduate degree (2:1 or above) in a relevant discipline such as history, musicology, literature, geography, or a related field. A master's degree is desirable but not essential. Candidates must demonstrate strong research skills, an interest in interdisciplinary work, and a commitment to collaborative research with cultural institutions. International applicants are welcome but must pay the difference between home and international tuition fees. The studentship can be studied full-time or part-time. No specific language test requirements are mentioned.

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