We’re delighted to say that IMCC members will be involved in supervision for two exciting Collaborative Doctoral Awards to be hosted at the University of Westminster starting in September 2024, under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme funded by Techne. Deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday 5 January 2024.

Photography by Train: New Leisure Experiences of Heritage in Britain, 1880s–1930s

This PhD will be the first to focus on the user experience of combining photography and train technologies in Britain between the 1880s-1930s by bringing the photography and transport collections of the SMG’s National Science and Media Museum in Bradford (NSMM) and National Railway Museum (NRM) in York into conversation with one other.

The successful applicant will have the opportunity to be embedded with the SMG and access the same levels of training, support, and expertise as members of staff, thus developing core heritage skills alongside academic capabilities. The project will be supervised by Dr Sara Dominici (Senior Lecturer in Photography Studies and Visual Culture), Professor Pippa Catterrall (Professor of History and Policy) and Dr Alison Hess (Lecturer in Museum and Gallery Studies) at Westminster, and, at the SMG, by Dr Oliver Betts (Head of Research) at the NRM in York and Dr Ruth Quinn (Curator of Photography and Photography Technology) at the NSMM in Bradford.

This inter-museum approach supports the SMG’s ambitious programme to understand and reimagine its collections by allowing for a relatable, human story to be told about how cameras and trains shaped people’s leisure experiences. Its collections-based approach expands the potential for public outputs, and the major redesign work of the NRM’s Vision2025 and of the NSMM’s photography displays offers a great opportunity to research and present these collections’ stories to the public through new displays, talks, and online content.

The PhD will investigate how the interaction of camera technologies and rail travel influenced people’s leisure practices and, consequently, their understanding and use of the British countryside and its heritage between the 1880s and 1930s.

Further details here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/techne-collaborative-doctoral-award-cda-studentship-photography-by-train

Pride, Passengers and Personnel: Collecting LGBTQ+ Experiences in and on London’s Transport in the 1970s and 1980s

The PhD will provide an opportunity to explore forgotten or neglected histories of the LGBTQ+ community in relation to London transport and contribute to current debates around contemporary collecting as a tool for empowering communities.

LTM is committed to diversity and inclusivity throughout its activities and organisation and has identified a gap in its collections on LGBTQ+ experiences in the 1970s and 1980s. This significant period of change was marked by the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1967, the advent of Pride and the Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s, the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s and the passage of S.28 in 1988. Addressing the current silence of the archive on these experiences will enrich LTM’s collections and provide context for their contemporary displays.

The successful applicant will have the opportunity to be embedded with the LTM and access the same levels of training, support, and expertise as members of staff, thus developing core heritage skills alongside academic capabilities. The project will be supervised by Dr Alison Hess (Lecturer in Museum and Gallery Studies), Professor Pippa Catterall (Professor of History and Policy) at Westminster, and, at the LTM, by Dr Ellie Miles Curator of Contemporary Collecting.

The student will have the opportunity to develop new approaches to collecting activity, taking a more inclusive, community-centred approach to researching, finding, and sourcing new material. This action research will be useful to LTM, providing reflections on a new collecting method that could potentially be applied more broadly across different collection areas. The student’s findings can be fed into the Museum’s collections development policy and contemporary collecting programme.

The PhD will focus on the experiences of London Transport staff and passengers during the 1970s and 80s which saw growing LGBTQ+ visibility and increasing workplace protection of minorities through legislation. The project will reflect on how London Transport managed such issues, including examining intersectionalities within LGBTQ+ groups. Passenger experiences will enhance understanding of how LGBTQ+ people use public transport, whether as an amenity, a site of potential encounters, or something to be negotiated with anxiety.

Further details here: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research-degrees/studentships/techne-collaborative-doctoral-award-cda-studentship-pride-passengers-and-personnel

Following a successful run last year, Sara Dominici from the IMCC is again leading the course “Inside Out: The Workings of a Photographic Gallery” in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery next year. Each session goes behind the scenes at The Photographers’ Gallery to consider what it means to present and work with photography in the 21st century. More information about the course, including details of each session, is available on The Photographers’ Gallery website.