PhD Projects 2012-2013
The School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology (GAP), Queen’s University Belfast, encourages applications from suitably qualified candidates for the following postgraduate awards and research topics for entry in autumn 2012. Closing dates for all awards is the 31st January 2012.
We have a track record in GAP of receiving DEL funding awards for supporting doctoral research in GAP. These awards cover fees and a maintenance grant for 3 years and are open to all EU citizens, but there are strict UK residency requirements for the receipt of the maintenance allowance. Please check our web site for the most up-to-date information on doctoral funding: www.qub.ac.uk/gap. The final number of awards and the quality of candidates will determine the funding allocations; we reserve the right to change allocations should suitable projects and/or candidates not be forthcoming.
There are two routes open to prospective applicants:
1. To apply for one of the doctoral research projects listed below (only some of these will be funded);
2. To develop a ‘student-driven’ doctoral research project (see further details below).
Candidates are welcome to apply for more than one research project, under any of the categories. Project titles are listed by research cluster with supervisory team members identified below.
Doctoral Research Projects on offer:
• Society, Space & Culture (SSC):
Housing markets and the geographies of worth
– Supervisors, Dr Niall Majury and Dr Nuala Johnson.
Plant cultures, political cultures: ‘race’, identity and power in the development of the National Botanic Gardens Kirstenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa
– Supervisors, Dr Nuala Johnson and Dr Diarmid Finnegan.
A cultural geography of ghost ‘towns’
– Supervisors, Dr Carl Griffin and Dr Keith Lilley.
Protesting power: articulating and networking opposition to high tension electricity lines
– Supervisors, Dr Carl Griffin and Dr Keith Lilley.
• Environmental Change
Global timing of abrupt climate change events 60-0 kcal BP
– Supervisors, Prof. Paula Reimer and Dr Maarten Blaauw.
Optimising our palaeoecological records: the best place to core lakes and peat bogs using ground- and water-penetrating radar
– Supervisors, Dr Alastair Ruffell and Dr Maarten Blaauw.
The past as a key to the future of hyperdiverse ecosystems: modelling biodiversity variation and resilience through records of Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental change and human activity in Thailand
– Supervisors, Dr Chris Hunt, Prof. Barbara Wohlfarth (University of Stockholm), and Prof. Paula Reimer.
Biotic responses to the evolution and drainage of pro-glacial Lake McConnell, NW Canada
– Supervisors, Dr Helen M. Roe, Dr Nicki Whitehouse, Dr Stephen Wolfe (Geological Survey of Canada), Prof. R. Timothy Patterson (Carleton Univ., Ottawa), Dr Graeme Swindles (Univ. Leeds).
Developing an automated pollen counting system
– Supervisors, Prof. Keith Bennett and Dr Maarten Blaauw.
• Past Cultural Change (PCC):
14C-based chronology of the Iberian Chalcolithic and Bronze Age sequence (3rd–early 1st millennia BC): a Bayesian approach
- Supervisors, Dr Dirk Brandherm, Dr Maarten Blaauw, Prof. Paula Reimer.
Economic development and diversity in the Upper Tiber valley, 1000BC-100AD – a study of Etruscan palaeoeconomy
– Supervisors, Dr Caroline Malone, Dr Nicki Whitehouse, Dr Chris Hunt, Dr S.Stoddart (University of Cambridge).
Use-wear on Atlantic Middle Bronze Age swords – Status indicators or weapons of war?
– Supervisors, Dr Dirk Brandherm, Dr Gill Plunkett, Dr Finbar McCormick.
Uniformity and diversity in the architecture of lodging ranges in fifteenth-century England and Ireland
– Supervisors, Dr Mark Gardiner and Dr Colm Donnelly.
Continuity and change in early modern Ireland: peopling Plantation-era County Armagh
– Supervisors, Prof. Audrey Horning and Dr Colm Donnelly.
In addition to the above we also seek applications for ‘student-driven’ doctoral research projects. Under this route, applicants wishing to submit an application and proposal for consideration should first make contact with prospective supervisors to discuss a potential topic. To identify prospective supervisors please see www.qub.ac.uk/gap for details and contact addresses. Once agreed, applicants then develop a full proposal in an agreed format (up to 1500 words), gain written agreement from prospective supervisors that they are willing to supervise the proposed project, and then submit an application (identifying referees) via the Queen’s University postgraduate application portal at http://qub.ac.uk/home/StudyatQueens/PostgraduateStudents/.
Further Details
Interested applicants of staff-driven research projects may obtain a full project description on request from: Gillian Johnson, School of Geography, Archaeology & Palaeoecology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN. Tel: 00 44 (0)28 9097 3595. Email: g.johnson@qub.ac.uk
In addition, we strongly encourage informal contact be made with the nominated supervisor(s) regarding details of the project, and GAP’s Postgraduate Co-ordinator Dr Keith Lilley (k.lilley@qub.ac.uk) to discuss application procedures and assessment. The application process involves submitting via Queen’s University postgraduate application portal a written research proposal (1500 words, in your own words) together with a CV and covering letter, all of which all uploaded via the portal as a single document.
Further information on the application process, selection of candidates and details of our research can be found on our web site. Candidates are strongly advised to read the detailed guidance here carefully prior to making an application: http://qub.ac.uk/home/StudyatQueens/PostgraduateStudents/
The information on this page is downloadable here as a PDF.
The School
The School was established in 2005 and encompasses research staff in human and physical geography, archaeology and palaeoecology.
Society, Space and Culture is concerned with a number of distinctive traditions relating to human geography: medieval geographies – past landscapes and economies; knowledge, space and the cultures of science; temporal GIS and digital humanities; spatial analysis of societies; and geography, empire and colonialism. Associated with this cluster are the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis (CDDA) and the Centre for Canadian Studies (CCS). The Director of this cluster is Professor Steve Royle.
Past Cultural Change is concerned with studying past people and cultures within the frameworks of cultural archaeology, bioarchaeology and environmental archaeology. The combination of environmental archaeology and especially bioarchaeology with more traditional approaches to the past helps to differentiate Queen’s from most other Archaeology groups and is seen as both a strength and stimulus to future developments. A highly successful applied arm of archaeological excavation and analysis, the Centre for Archaeology Fieldwork (CAF) is associated with this cluster. The Director of this cluster is Prof. Audrey Horning.
Environmental Change is concerned with understanding how physical environments have changed, or are changing, over a range of different time scales from 20,000 years to the near instantaneous. There are strong bio-ecological and geomorphological traditions in our research, which are combined in both Late-Quaternary and Holocene studies as well as in contemporary and future considerations. The development of the Centre for Climate, the Environment and Chronology (CHRONO) is associated with this cluster. The Director of this cluster is Dr Paula Reimer.
