AHRC M4C CDA: Almshouse, Guild and Town Community: The Lord Leycester Hospital in its Urban Setting

Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship to be held at the Department of History, University of Warwick and the Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick. The studentship is funded through the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership and will start on 1 October 2023.

The Department of History has partnered with the Lord Leycester Hospital to offer a project on ‘Almshouse, Guild and Town Community: The Lord Leycester Hospital in its Urban Setting’. In addition to the PhD research the successful candidate will also gain experience and training in contributing to outreach and public engagement activities, including developing an exhibition.

In 2020, the Hospital secured a 3.8 million National Lottery Grant for restoration of the Grade I and II listed buildings, along with other improvements and engagement activities. This will include the creation of four new museum and exhibition spaces exploring and showcasing the Hospital’s 700-year history. In making the estate more accessible and public facing, the Lord Leycester Hospital plans to engage with students and researchers at schools and Higher Education Institutions in the Warwickshire area.

The project will explore how the Lord Leycester Hospital, an elite philanthropic organisation, operated within local, regional, and national frameworks over its first century, questioning how far its relationship to the town of Warwick was reciprocal, complementary, or contested. It will be based on the integration of the artefacts and archival records related to the Lord Leycester Hospital with contextual materials held at Warwickshire Record Office and other local and national institutions and organisations.

There is scope for the successful candidate to follow their own interests. For example, they may want to focus on the architecture of this former Medieval Guld building as a status symbol for the town, or on the cultures of philanthropy within Warwickshire and England more broadly, or the religious tensions that emerged from its ‘Puritan’ associations. Equally, the successful candidate may wish to focus on the question of gender and the place of local women within the space of the almshouse.

The student will benefit from a joint supervision between staff at the Lord Leycester Hospital and the University of Warwick. The project is led by Dr Naomi Pullin and Prof. Beat Kümin based at the University of Warwick, both specialists on early modern religious and communal organisation, and Dr Heidi Meyer, Master of the Lord Lecyester Hospital.

For more information about the project please contact Naomi Pullin (naomi.pullin@warwick.ac.uk) or Beat Kümin (b.kumin@warwick.ac.uk).

All applications, including 2 completed references, must be submitted to both the University of Warwick and Midlands4Cities by 11 January 2023. Following consideration, eligible candidates will be shortlisted for interview.

Advert information