The University of Manchester and Historic Royal Palaces are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from October 2022 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Edmond Smith, Presidential Fellow in Economic Cultures, University of Manchester and Dr Misha Ewen, Curator for Inclusive History, Historic Royal Palaces, and the student will be expected to spend time at both at the University of Manchester and Historic Royal Palaces as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK. The studentship can be studied either full or part-time.

We encourage the widest range of potential students to study for this CDP studentship and are committed to welcoming students from different backgrounds to apply. We particularly welcome applications from underrepresented communities and from non-traditional academic backgrounds, as they are currently underrepresented at this level in this area. Students should have a master’s degree in a relevant subject or can demonstrate equivalent experience in a professional setting.

Project Description:

This CDP project will explore how the royal family functioned as an integral part of the institutional structures that underpinned Britain’s economic and imperial development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, granting charters, patents, and monopolies to projects that attracted their support. During this period, they formed part of a tripartite system of economic and imperial oversight that included the crown, the court, and, increasingly, parliament. Yet, despite the crown’s direct support for chartered trading companies, or for the establishment of so-called ‘crown colonies’ in the Americas, studies of Britain’s emerging empire rarely consider precisely how the royal family understood or participated in these activities.

Key research questions include:

-What was the role of the royal family in imperial developments?

-What agency did royals have in the creation and support of new institutional paradigms?

-How did their lives at court within the royal palaces shape how they understood Britain’s emerging empire and their place within it?

Details of Award:

CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 45 months (3.75 years) or part-time equivalent. The studentship has the possibility of being extended for an additional 3 months to provide professional development opportunities, or up to 3 months of funding may be used to pay for the costs the student might incur in taking up professional development opportunities.

Application Deadline: 29 April 2022

More details on how to apply for this role are available here