About the Programme
Duration – 3.5-year doctoral scholarships
Funding source – The Leverhulme Trust and King’s College London
Application deadline – 8 May 2024
Click to download the Call for Applications
Funding
- For UK Doctoral Scholarships Home (UK) tuition fees, an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate, and £10,000 to support research and training needs.
- For International Doctoral Scholarships tuition fees (UKRI base levels), an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate, and £10,000 to support research and training needs.
The Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme `Knowledge Orders before Modernity’ (KOM) is an innovative collaboration between King’s College London and the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) at the University of Kent. The programme explores the capacity of the handwritten word comparatively, after as well as before the advent of the printing press, outside as well as within western cultures. It seeks to challenge a conventional periodization which associates complex knowledge, complex archival mechanisms, and mundane recording with the development of western print culture.
The programme funds three cohorts of doctoral scholars, starting in 2024, 2025, and 2026, with up to five scholarships in the first cohort (2024/5). All successful candidates will participate in a shared programme of visits, events, and discussions. Doctoral scholars will be registered at the University of their first supervisor, either at King’s College London or the University of Kent.
The programme has four themes
A) Technologies of knowledge – materiality, writing systems, layout, accounts, numerals, diagrams, ciphers.
B) Embodied knowledge – scribal careers, training, personal mobility, professionalization, language, gatekeepers.
C) Systems of knowledge – archiving processes, witness, memory, reading practices, recall, authenticity, compilation.
D) Chronologies of knowledge – innovation, continuity, engagement with the past, responses to the present, reuse, forgery.
Applications are invited for KOM advertised projects or via an open call Projects – Knowledge Orders before Modernity (komldsp.org.uk). Applicants applying via the open call must demonstrate how their project aligns with one or more of KOM’s four themes.
King’s and MEMS at the University of Kent are leading centres for the study of pre-modern documentary and manuscript cultures, and include world-leading expertise in digital humanities, at King’s Digital Laboratory (KDL) and the Department of Digital Humanities.
Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars receive: (1) a personal training fund of £10,000; (2) membership of a group of peers and academics addressing common themes and approaches; (3) participation in a programme of bespoke internal and external training, including with archives and libraries and with King’s Digital Laboratory (KDL); (4) access to training opportunities available within the consortium.
KOM welcomes a field of applicants from a diversity of backgrounds and we undertake to build relevant skills training into the student’s individual work-plan.
In addition to the Doctoral Scholarships, during the lifetime of the award, the Leverhulme Trust will fund up to three Master’s Plus Doctoral scholars, available to applicants from under-represented groups. For more information, see Master’s Plus – Knowledge Orders before Modernity (komldsp.org.uk).
Duration and value of award
The scholarship offers up to 3.5 years (42 months) of funding, dependent on satisfactory progress, and will cover full tuition fees and an annual maintenance grant of at UKRI rates.
For informal enquiries, please contact the programme directors, Professor Julia Crick (King’s College London) or Dr David Rundle (University of Kent). For information about a specific advertised KOM Project, please contact the named first supervisor.
Entry requirements
Applicants should have at a minimum a good first degree (at least 2.1, or international equivalent) in a relevant subject, and have obtained, or are currently working towards a Master’s degree at Merit level or above, or international equivalent, in these or a related discipline.
- If English is not your first language you will need to meet the English language requirements and provide proof of proficiency. Click here for more information. Postgraduate English language entry requirements – King’s College London (kcl.ac.uk).
- Applicants would be expected to start their studies in September 2024. Recipients are expected to commit to engagement beyond their doctoral studies through contributing to the Knowledge Orders programme.
- This award is open to applicants whose fee status is classed as Home (UK) and International. See further What we offer – Knowledge Orders before Modernity (komldsp.org.uk). Click here for further information about fee status EU and international eligibility for UKRI studentships from 2021 – UKRI.
- Scholarships are only open to applicants who will start their study in September 2024, not those who have already started.
For further information please follow this link – How to apply – Knowledge Orders before Modernity (komldsp.org.uk).