Two PhD Studentships in History

Description

The Department of History at the University of Liverpool is pleased to invite applications for two fully-funded (fees and maintenance) PhD studentships to start on 1 October 2025. One studentship will be ring-fenced for Black applicants and may focus on any field of historical study and any period in which the department has supervisory expertise. The other studentship will focus specifically on the History of Race, Health and Medicine in any period between 1700 and the present. These studentships provide three years of full-time funding, including tuition fees at the home-student rate and an annual maintenance stipend equal to the standard UKRI rate (£19,237 p.a. in 2024-25).

Lifting Barriers to Black Academia PhD Studentship

This studentship is funded through Departmental endowments to signal our support for the findings of the Lifting Barriers to Black Academia Through Decolonisation and Positive Action Report, which follows on from an online series of symposia hosted by the Department’s Centre for the Study of International Slavery in 2021. The report documents the racial disparities and barriers Black scholars face in progressing at higher education institutions and recommends positive action to address the awards gap for Black academic staff and research students. This studentship will be ring-fenced for applicants of Black ethnicity (including Black British, Black African, Black Caribbean or dual heritage backgrounds), since this group has been disproportionately under-represented in doctoral study and research funding in History, in our University and nationwide.

This studentship will focus on any field of historical study and any period in which the department has supervisory expertise. The Department of History is part of the School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, one of the largest Schools in the University, exploring culture and society from the origins of humanity and ancient history to modern day politics. We are an interdisciplinary group of historians committed to an engaged approach to the global past. In the 2021 REF exercise 100% of our research was classified as 4* and 3* for Research Environment. We had a 24% increase in 4* research across our outputs, impact, and environment since the last REF. We place particular emphasis on addressing historical injustices through our work on the Holocaust, medical racism, slavery, and colonial and postcolonial violence. From the rise of the far right to climate change, health care, library provision, abortion, religious intolerance and knife crime, we pride ourselves on using historical research to inform key contemporary debates.

As a PhD student, you will form part of an active postgraduate research community within the History Department, who hold Work-in-Progress seminars and organise an annual History postgraduate conference, which invites speakers from within and outside the University. You will have dedicated career development training from history staff, giving you guidance on subjects such as academic publishing and post-doctoral fellowships, as well as opportunities to apply for paid teaching experience on certain undergraduate modules.

PhD students are a central part of the department’s vibrant research culture. You will have access to a dedicated study space within the School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, enabling you to meet, and form interdisciplinary collaborations with other early career scholars during your time at Liverpool. The Department contributes to several highly active interdisciplinary research centres which offer further opportunities for collaboration, enrichment and career development, including the Liverpool Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Eighteenth-Century Worlds, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery, the Centre for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences, the Centre for Health, Arts, Science & Environment, and the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies. The Department also has excellent links with a wide range of museums and other institutions on Merseyside and beyond, including National Museums Liverpool, the International Slavery Museum, the Bluecoat contemporary arts centre, the Athenaeum and Unilever Archives.

PhD Studentship on the History of Race, Health and Medicine

This studentship will focus specifically on any aspect of the history of race, health and medicine from the 18th through to the 21st century. The relationship between medicine and race – including medical racism – has recently attracted sustained attention and significant responses from national medical and public health associations, including the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association and the American Public Health Association, with major medical publications connected to these leading organizations publishing special issues on the subject (see: BMJ, AJPH, JAMA). Potential projects might, for example, consider the global circulation of medical knowledge produced in the context of the ‘plantation system’; health care practices and health care experiences of Global Majority groups in a specific historical period or geographic setting; the racialization of bodies, diseases and illnesses; issues around the training and career development of Global Majority staff within medical systems such as the British NHS. There are a wealth of opportunities and archival resources relevant to this topic within the Liverpool city region, including those relating to the first Liverpool Infirmary (opened in 1748), the Liverpool Medical Institution (founded as a medical subscription library in 1779) and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (established in 1898). The University of Liverpool Library system has extensive holdings related to the global history of slavery and the history of medicine, including key print and online resources such as the full series of The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography and Gale Nineteenth-Century Collections Online: Science, Technology, and Medicine, 1780-1925. Other relevant initiatives at the University of Liverpool include the interdisciplinary Centre for Health, Arts, Science & Environment and the University’s flagship partnership with Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, the Centre for the Study of International Slavery.

This studentship is open to all applicants. We strongly encourage applications from communities underrepresented in UK academic History, including people from Global Majority communities who are currently underrepresented in the department’s teaching and research.

Eligibility and Application Process

To apply, please send a CV (including degree transcripts), a PhD proposal of between 500 and 1000 words, and a sample of academic work (3,000-5,000 words in length) to hlcscholarships@liverpool.ac.uk by 5pm GMT on Friday 30 May 2025. In their application, candidates should make clear to which studentship they are applying.

In developing your proposal, it is essential that you identify a potential supervisor/supervisors within the Department of History and that you make contact with those members of staff prior to submitting your application. You can find a list of staff in the Department of History here: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/staff/. General queries should be addressed to the Departmental Director of Postgraduate Research Dr Junqing Wu (Junqing.Wu@liverpool.ac.uk).

In order to be eligible for these studentships, you will need first to have applied for a PhD place at the University of Liverpool prior to the deadline for this competition and be a Home fee status student. You do not need to wait for the outcome of your application before applying for funding.

The award will be made on the basis of the academic merit of your application, including the fit between the proposed project, the supervisory team and wider research priorities within the Department. The successful candidate will ordinarily have either a first class or a 2:1 undergraduate degree in a relevant subject, and will have completed or be close to completing a Masters degree by September 2025.