SGSAH AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award 2024/25: Women, Gender, and Political Engagement at The Glasgow School of Art

The School of Art History, University of St Andrews and The Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections are pleased to offer a Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) Collaborative Doctoral Award to support a student undertaking research for the project: Women, Gender, and Political Engagement at The Glasgow School of Art.

This CDA offers an exciting opportunity to work closely with The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) Archives and Collections to uncover and communicate marginalised histories of gender and politics from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. GSA welcomed women as students and teachers as early as the mid-nineteenth century, developing a modernising curriculum that permitted them to instrumentalise their art in the campaign for suffrage. Yet GSA’s Archives and Collections still contain unresearched material related to the political activities of women artists (including trans women, nonbinary and genderqueer practitioners), whose work speaks to the construction of women as political subjects, and to intersections of gender with class, race and sexuality.

The successful student will develop their own research project within the parameters of the award. Possible research questions might include:

• What was unique about GSA’s environment that stimulated widespread political engagement by artists who identified as women, and what challenges did they face?
• What forms did this political engagement take – for example, from engagements with suffrage campaigns to the anti-nuclear movement and ecological concerns?
• How might marginalised histories of gender, political organising, and feminist, anti-racist and LGBTQIA+ activism be surfaced through the archive and collections?
• What contributions might these narratives make to wider developments in queer feminist art histories? 
• How can we communicate marginalised histories at GSA relating to gender and sexuality, alongside the broader political activism of students and staff, to a wider public?

The student will be supervised by Dr. Shona Kallestrup and Dr. Catherine Spencer at the University of St Andrews, and Michelle Kaye (Collections Lead) and Polly Christie (Archives & Collections Manager) at The Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections.

For full details, see www.st-andrews.ac.uk/art-history/news/title-214666-en.php.

Please address informal enquires to Dr Shona Kallestrup: sk61@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Start date: 1 October 2024.

Duration and value

3.5 years full-time or 7 years part-time. The CDA offers an annual stipend of approx. £19,600 (full-time) plus fees at the Home (UK) rate. The University of St Andrews will cover the additional international student fees.

Applicants should:

• Hold at least a 2:1 undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline.
• Have completed, or be on course to complete, a Masters Degree in a relevant discipline and/or demonstrate equivalent professional experience.
• Be able to demonstrate preparedness for the proposed project.

How to apply

Please submit the following documents to pgarthist@st-andrews.ac.uk by Friday 17^th May 2024 (5pm UK time): 

• Personal Statement (500 words) detailing your qualifications and/or relevant experience.
• Research Proposal (1000–1500 words) outlining how you would approach the project.
• Short Curriculum Vitae (max. 2 pages)
• Academic writing sample (e.g. Masters chapter, or undergraduate dissertation where the applicant does not have a MA qualification).
• Names and contact details of two academic/professional referees.

Please ensure referees can provide (on request) their reference by Monday 27 May 2024. Referees will only be contacted for shortlisted candidates.

Interviews will be held online on Tuesday 28^th May.

Advert information