This autumn, we’re delighted to offer a new fully-funded PhD opportunity: the Seven Stories Northern Bridge Partnership Award!
Northern Bridge is the AHRC-funded Doctoral Training Partnership between Newcastle University, Durham University and Queen’s University Belfast. Northern Bridge offers funded PhD studentships, with support for placements and training, to outstanding applicants through a competitive scheme.
Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books is a Strategic Partner to Northern Bridge. When Northern Bridge suggested that we could issue a targeted Partnership Award call in this year’s application round, we jumped at the chance…
What are the benefits?
For applicants: well, for starters, it’s a fully-funded PhD opportunity and Northern Bridge’s focus on academic excellence means that these studentships are very highly regarded.
You’ll have the opportunity to study Seven Stories’ amazing children’s literature collection in depth through your PhD research. This could also lead to placement opportunities with us through Northern Bridge: perhaps your work will feed into a Seven Stories exhibition, or you could help us with collection management tasks, or maybe you could deliver a public event?
For Seven Stories: Seven Stories encourage research on our collection. Academic research really helps to unlock the archive and we love the new ideas that researchers come up with.
For Northern Bridge: By launching the Partnership Awards this year, Northern Bridge are exploring a new way of involving Strategic Partners within the Doctoral Training Partnerships – and we’re excited to be trailblazing with them!
So how will it work?
Step 1: Working with Northern Bridge, Seven Stories have developed a call for applications for the Partnership Award. We’re particularly interested in receiving applications in the following areas: Makers of children’s literature: children’s book history 1750-2000, New adults: the growth of teenage literature, and Children on stage: twentieth century children’s theatre. But if you want to look at Seven Stories’ collections from another angle, we’d still be very interested in hearing from you. Take a look…
Step 2: The application period is now live! Students who are planning to apply for the Seven Stories Partnership Award are encouraged to outline their proposed research project and email this with a CV to sarah.rylance@ncl.ac.uk to register their interest by 18 November 2016.
Step 3: Next, students will work with Seven Stories and their proposed academic supervisor to develop their research proposals. Newcastle University will also be holding a Children’s Literature Unit Postgraduate Open Day on 3 November where you can discuss your application!
Step 4: The completed applications will go into the 2017 Northern Bridge Studentship competition and will be assessed alongside all other Northern Bridge submissions. The outcome of the studentship competition will be announced in March 2017.
Step 5: Successful applicants will start their Partnership Award PhD in autumn 2017.
So now I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that we get some great applications!
For more information about Northern Bridge and the Seven Stories Partnership Award, visit the Northern Bridge website.
