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About the Project
Applications are invited for a fully-funded AHRC Collaborative PhD studentship held at the Institute for Design Innovation, Loughborough University London, and the Natural History Museum, London, on the theme of ‘Design for Decolonising Coral in the Natural History Museum’ to commence in autumn 2024.
Loughborough University London is a member of technē: a consortium of nine universities in London and the South-East that form an AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership who award studentships each year across a range of arts and humanities disciplines. technē supports outstanding students in the pursuit of research through innovative, interdisciplinary, and creative approaches.
Coral is both a barometer of climate change and a superorganism with complex global cultural histories. Direct links between colonialism and ecological crisis point to the urgency of this area of examination for natural history collections, as nodes of empire. Burgeoning interest in oceans’ role in planetary health and in colonisation prompts new examinations of marine life in these contexts. Amid calls for ‘ocean literacy’, there is equally a demonstrated need for material and aesthetic interventions, including analysis of historical marine collecting, cataloguing and display, and implementation within exhibition, pedagogical and programme design.
We invite proposals for a project that examines what lessons can be learned from corals, for rethinking at the intersections of environmental studies, decolonising theories and design methodologies. In the Natural History Museum, London, relevant histories range from the collection and display in the historical Coral Gallery to the political and ecological contexts of the Chagos Coral Collection. The successful candidate will undertake a programme of research interrogating coral’s linked histories of imperialism, environmental crises and their relation to the designed world. This may incorporate co-design with both human and nonhuman agents, drawing on Indigenous or anti-colonial methods. A public engagement output (e.g., a live event, an online resource or similar) will be embedded into the research process and form part of the written thesis.
The candidate will receive training in archival and collections-based research, practice-based production skills, research communication and public engagement through Technē, the Natural History Museum and the Doctoral College, Loughborough University. They will benefit from engagement with diverse museum professionals as well as researchers of critical heritage, communication studies, imperialism, museum studies, design and visual culture working across the university’s two campuses.
The CDA will be co-supervised by Dr Pandora Syperek, Institute for Design Innovation, Dr Ksenija Kuzmina, Institute for Design Innovation, Dr Peter Yeandle, International Relations, Politics and History, and Miranda Lowe, Natural History Museum.
Lead supervisor
Loughborough University London