PhD Studentship in British Museum and SOAS
AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) in the British Museum and SOAS
Deadline: 31 March 2016
AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA): ‘Individuality and identity in cuneiform: personalising economic documentation from the 21st and 20th centuries BC’
Duration of studentship: 3 years (to start 1 October 2016)
The Department of the Middle East at the British Museum and the Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East at SOAS invite applications from suitably qualified UK/EU candidates for a full-time, 3-year Collaborative Doctoral Award funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council on the subject of ‘Individuality and identity in cuneiform: personalising economic documentation from the 21st and 20th centuries BC’. Supervision will be provided by Dr Mark Weeden at SOAS and Dr Jonathan Taylor at the BM.
The successful candidate will investigate individuality and identity in cuneiform through study of carefully selected text corpora from the Ur III and Old Assyrian periods. (S)he will develop methodologies to draw out differences along temporal, geographical and social axes, using approaches based around:
1) The tablet as text carrier: clay type, manufacturing techniques, tablet size and shape.
2) The inscription as artefact: text layout, spelling, character forms, stroke order within characters, and non-textual features.
Award: Subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, which include residence conditions, the full studentship award covers tuition fees and a grant (stipend) towards living expenses (a fees-only studentship award covers tuition fees only). The value of the stipend for 2016/17 is yet to be confirmed and is only available to UK nationals and usually to EU-citizens if they have three years of residence in the UK. It is likely to be £14,296 plus £550 additional stipend payment for Collaborative Doctoral Students. Students registered at a London Higher Educational Establishment have an additional £2,000 London Weighting. Additionally the award contains up to £1,000 a year from the British Museum to support research costs such as research trips or conference attendance etc.). Non-EU overseas applicants are normally not eligible for the award.
For further information and instructions on how to apply, please go to:
Queries regarding the project are welcome. Please email Dr Mark Weeden at mailto:mw41@soas.ac.uk and Dr Jonathan Taylor at mailto:jjtaylor@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk