PhD Studentship: Space Stories at the National Archives

Start date: 21 September 2026

Overview

The Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space (LCHS) has been awarded up to £10m for 10 years to transform the academic landscape when it comes to our understanding of Space through the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The LCHS will support cohorts of interdisciplinary postdoctoral and doctoral researchers alongside Leicester’s existing staff and Centre collaborators to develop new intellectual insights, innovative new methodological approaches, and build new collaborations. LCHS is based at Space Park Leicester, where the Centre’s researchers work alongside research scientists, start-up space companies, business and governmental bodies.

As part of this vibrant programme, we are seeking to recruit a fully funded PhD student to join our team of researchers working across the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Leicester.

Supervisors:

• Dr Ben Parsons bp62@le.ac.uk
• Keith Mitchell (National Archives)

Project Description:

This fully funded PhD placement will offer the successful applicant a unique opportunity to work collaboratively with The National Archives (TNA) and the University of Leicester’s Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space (LCHS). It invites submissions for research projects that will focus on the relationship between archival and fictional materials concerned with outer space. Projects should aim to engage in depth with TNA’s extensive holdings of space-related documents, which touch on various aspects of the history of astronomy and space science, in order to bring them into dialogue with the cultural imagination and its sense of worlds beyond our own. The researcher’s basis at the LCHS will allow the applicant to investigate the vexed and permeable boundary between ‘fiction’ and ‘fact’ through the records, and to think about the ways in which they draw from and have affected literary and popular cultural trends and paradigms, and to consider how artistic and archival materials might explain and enliven one another. 

While applicants are free to suggest their own lines of research that fit with the LCHS research strand of Communication, Representation and Experience, and which draw on materials from TNA, example topics might include: envisioning the architecture of space; early conceptions of space and space technology; the work of specific writers or movements read in light of documentary sources; early Astronomers Royal and the place of astronomy in Enlightenment politics; UFO records and popular depictions of extraterrestrial life; linking archival files and space museum objects. Applicants are however welcome to address any area that will enable them to examine attitudes, conceptions or anxieties around outer space in both cultural and archival terms in any historical period.

We invite research proposals interested in engaging with TNA records along these lines. Interested parties should outline as fully as they can how they intend to employ and explore the records, what provisional questions will animate their research, how they will investigate the records’ connections with wider cultural influences, and how they will contribute to LCHS research culture. 

The PhD will be co-supervised by Dr Ben Parsons at the University of Leicester and Keith Mitchell at TNA, Kew. Please reach out to Dr Parsons with any queries or for any further information.

Before applying please refer to the sections below and especially the How to Apply information. Please use the Research Proposal Form for your proposal. Use the application link at the bottom of this page.

Funding

The Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space PhD Studentship will provide:

4 years full tuition fees (UK or Overseas as required)
4 years UKRI rate stipend - for 2026/7 the rate will be £21,805 pa (paid monthly)

Entry requirements

Applicants are required to hold a UK Bachelor Degree 2:1 or better in a relevant subject or overseas equivalent and a Master's Degree.  

The University of Leicester English language requirements apply.

Informal enquiries

Project enquiries: please email Dr Ben Parsons bp62@le.ac.uk

Application issues please email pgradmissions@le.ac.uk

How to apply

To apply please use the 'Apply' button above and select September 2026.

Download and complete your Research Proposal Form

With your application, please include:  

• CV
• Personal statement explaining your interest in the project, your experience and why we should consider you
• Degree Certificates and Transcripts of study already completed and if possible transcript to date of study currently being undertaken
• Evidence of English language proficiency if applicable
• In the reference section please enter the contact details of your two academic referees in the boxes provided or upload letters of reference if already available. Project supervisors are not able to act as referees.
• In the proposal section upload your completed Research Proposal Form. Include the name of your proposed supervisor, academic department and project title in the space provided.
• In the funding section please specify:  Media and Communications- Parsons (LCHS)

Eligibility

Open to UK and overseas applicants

Application options

Leverhulme CHS Studentship