[ecrea] PhD Studentship available: Oral History and Conflict Resolution in Belfast

*Cross-Community Oral History, Post-Conflict Geography and Conflict 
Resolution at West Belfast Interfaces*

*TECHNE AHRC PhD Studentship in collaboration with Falls Community 
Council and University of Brighton*

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD at the University of 
Brighton: “Cross-Community Oral History, Post-Conflict Geography and 
Conflict Resolution at West Belfast Interfaces”. This is offered under 
the TECHNE Doctoral Training Partnership Awards scheme. The partner 
institutions are the University of Brighton and Falls Community Council 
(FCC) in West Belfast. The studentship will be supervised by Professor 
Graham Dawson and Professor Catherine Moriarty of the University of 
Brighton and Claire Hackett of FCC. This full-time studentship, which is 
funded for three years at standard AHRC rates, will begin on 1 October 2018.

*The Studentship*

This studentshipwill investigate, evaluate and contribute to further 
development of the Dúchas Oral History Archive as a tool for conflict 
resolution and reconciliation in WestBelfast. Established by Falls 
Community Council in 1999, the original aim of the Archive was to record 
experiences of the Northern Ireland conflict in nationalist West 
Belfast. This has expanded through peacebuilding work with working class 
communities across Belfast. Over time, contacts with unionist 
communities emerged, were nurtured, and developed into a cross-community 
partnership for gathering interviews and creating opportunities for 
public and private conversations about history and memory. The archive 
now contains a range of collections and includes interviews from 
residents at the interfaces between the unionist Shankill and 
nationalist Divis, Clonard and Springfield areas.

The project involves critical exploration of the strategies and 
practices devised by Dúchas to build relationships across divisions and 
to acknowledge and deal with a conflicted history. It will examine the 
Archive’s conception of the relationship between oral history and 
conflict resolution, and how conflicts and divisions that arise in 
community and cross-community oral history practice on West Belfast’s 
interfaces have been addressed in its work. Dúchas’s influence on local 
understandings about the value of cross-community history-making and 
memory-work, and its role in the societal and policy conversation about 
the significance of storytelling work in dealing with the past, will be 
considered.

The project also involves detailed engagement with the narratives 
collected in the Archive, and pioneer their use in making an 
interpretative history of experiences and memories of ‘place’ on both 
sides of the interfaces before, during and after the Troubles. Drawing 
on current academic scholarship on life history and memory of conflict, 
post-conflict geography and conflict resolution, and attending to 
differences within as well as between interface communities, the project 
will explore how these stories may inform a local history concerned with 
community identity and relationship, spatial division and fragmentation, 
social (dis)connectedness, and grass-roots agency in relation to State 
policy and practice.

Through this twin approach, the studentship will advance further 
developments in cross-community storytelling and archiving practices by 
the Dúchas Archive and its partnership organisations, and contribute to 
wider debates amongst community practitioners, policy-makers and 
academics about the uses and limitations of oral history in conflict 
resolution and reconciliation.

*Eligibility*

Applicants must satisfy AHRC eligibility requirements and should 
normally have a Masters degree and interdisciplinary academic experience 
in one or more of the following: life history research, cultural memory 
studies, historical cultural studies, social history, cultural 
geography, social anthropology. Practical experience of an 
oral/community history project, and/or peace-building/conflict 
resolution work, and/or archiving, would be an advantage.

Applicants must be a resident of the UK or European Economic Area (EEA). 
In general, full studentships are available to students who are settled 
in the UK and have been ordinarily resident for a period of at least 
three years before the start of postgraduate studies. Fees-only awards 
are generally available to EU nationals resident in the EEA. 
International applicants are normally not eligible to apply for this 
studentship.

*Funding*

Subject to AHRC eligibility criteria, the studentship covers tuition 
fees and a grant (stipend) towards living expenses. The value of the 
stipend for 2018/19 is yet to be confirmed. However, it is likely to be 
£14,553 plus £550 additional stipend payment for Collaborative Doctoral 
Students. Students can apply for an additional six months stipend to 
engage in extended development activities such as work placements. For 
more information visit: 
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/skills/phdstudents/fundingandtraining.

As a TECHNE student, the person selected will have full access to the 
TECHNE Doctoral Training Partnership development activities and 
networking opportunities, joining a cohort of about 50 students per year 
from across seven universities in London and the south-east. See 
www.techne.ac.uk <http://www.techne.ac.uk>. TECHNE students can also 
apply for additional funding to support individual or group training and 
development activities.

*How to Apply*

Applicants should submit via email a curriculum vitae (no more than two 
pages), a sample of writing, a brief letter outlining their 
qualification for the studentship, and the names and contact details of 
two academic referees to (brighton-doctoral-college /at/ brighton.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(brighton-doctoral-college /at/ brighton.ac.uk)>no later than 5pm on 30 
October 2017. All documents should be submitted in either a MS Word or 
PDF format. Please ensure the subject line of your email appears as 
‘surname, first name – FCC/Brighton studentship.’

Interviews are scheduled to be held in Brighton *the week beginning 13 
November 2017*.  Shortlisted candidates will be required to complete an 
application to the Doctoral Programme at the University of Brighton.

For further information please contact Professor Graham Dawson 
((g.dawson /at/ brighton.ac.uk) <mailto:(g.dawson /at/ brighton.ac.uk)> | +44 (0)1273 
643301)


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