AHRC PhD Studentship - Literary Conceptions of Wales in Europe: 1750-2010.

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS & HUMANITIES
BANGOR UNIVERSITY

AHRC PhD Studentship

Project title: Literary Conceptions of Wales in Europe: 1750-2010.

Applications are invited by the Graduate School of Arts and Humanities at Bangor University for an AHRC PhD Studentship as part of the AHRC-funded collaborative project ‘European Travellers to Wales 1750-2010’, involving Bangor University, Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies and Swansea University. The successful candidate will work under the supervision of the Principal Investigator, Professor Carol Tully (School of Modern Languages, Bangor University), and in close contact with Dr Heather Williams, co-investigator (Centre for Advanced Celtic Studies, University of Wales), co-investigator Dr Kathryn Jones (Swansea University), a Research Officer and one other PhD student based at Swansea. A strong advisory panel will include experts on travel literature, modern languages and Welsh studies.

The studentship is available to candidates able to commence their studies at any time between 1 June 2013 and 1 October 2013.
 
Project Outline

This doctoral project will explore critically the reception and depiction of Wales in the field of European literature, broadly defined as scholarship and creative work. The thesis will focus on, but not be limited to, French and German sources. The student will explore how travel to Wales and the experience of reading about Wales influenced the literary reception and fictionalisation of Wales and Welsh culture in the modern and contemporary periods.  The aim of the project is to fill a gap in scholarship to date. There has been a great deal of work done on the influence of Welsh culture on Europe in the medieval and early modern period. A number of studies have looked at the wider reception of Scotland and Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The role of Wales in this period has yet to be explored in detail. The successful candidate will be expected to explore a range of texts from the fields of historiography, philology and creative writing and make use of current cultural theories to contextualise and analyse the material.

This PhD will feed into a much larger project which examines the representation of Wales and ‘Welshness’ in texts by European travellers from 1750 to 2010, focusing on key points in the period of Welsh modernisation from the Industrial Revolution to the post-devolution era (i.e. French Revolution; Romanticism; Welsh religious revival, 20th century exile). From the mid-eighteenth century, which saw the emergence of the travel narrative as a popular source of information and entertainment, writing about Wales by Europeans has often been embedded in accounts of travel to ‘England’. The current project will draw these out, and by broadening perspectives outwards to encompass European perceptions, will realign the current debate in scholarship on travel writing which has centred primarily on English travellers to Wales.

The successful candidate will be based in the School of Modern Languages at Bangor University which provides a very favourable environment for interdisciplinary research of this nature.  The School holds regular research seminars, including seminars organised by postgraduate students where they present papers on their work. Postgraduate students are also encouraged to speak at international conferences and publish their research. Information on the School and staff is available at: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/ml/index.php.en

Eligibility

Applicants should hold a distinguished academic record, which will include a Bachelor Degree (or equivalent) in a relevant field and preferably also the award of, or current study for, a Masters degree. A good working knowledge of French and/or German is essential. Knowledge other European languages would be an advantage.  Full-time Doctoral students who qualify for the full AHRC studentship will have their tuition fees paid for and will receive a stipend of £13,590 p.a. (this is the rate in the 2012/13 academic year). AHRC awards are open to UK and to EU applicants. Please be aware that EU applicants may qualify for a fees-only award. For more details on eligibility please refer to section 7 and Annexe A of the following document:  http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/GuidetoStudentFunding.pdf

Application Procedure

The application deadline is Monday 29th April 2013 and interviews will be held in May. Applicants *must* apply using the University's Postgraduate On-Line Application Form available here: Please supply all the relevant supporting documents requested on the on-line application form electronically, including a research proposal (max. 1000 words) which responds to the project outline and details  your relevant research skills and experience (including, for example, a brief description of your university programme of study to date).

For further information regarding this scholarship and the online application form, contact iwan.davies@bangor.ac.uk, Postgraduate Administrator, College of Arts and Humanities, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG.

For enquires about the project, please contact Professor Carol Tully.

Publication date: 21 February 2013