In addition to a maintenance stipend and tuition fees CHASE studentships provide access to opportunities for placements, fieldwork and extensive access to arts and humanities training. CHASE students join an active community of arts and humanities doctoral researchers within Birkbeck and across the CHASE consortium.
CHASE is is working in partnership with the Stuart Hall Foundation (SHF) to support at least two studentships a year for Home candidates from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic to undertake doctoral research in arts and humanities. Applicants with an interest in the work and legacy of Stuart Hall are particularly encouraged. All applicants will also be entered into the general studentship competition.
How to apply
For details of how to apply, and how applications will be considered please visit Birkbeck’s AHRC CHASE landing page.
Important: We strongly encourage you to submit a programme application as soon as you can. The earlier you receive an offer of a place on your chosen PhD programme, the earlier you can begin to prepare your application for CHASE funding.
Important dates
Friday 5 January 2024: Deadline to submit an application for entry to an MPhil/PhD programme here at Birkbeck.
Midday 26 January 2024: Deadline to submit an online CHASE application form to be considered by our Birkbeck CHASE recruitment and selection process.
Applications are invited for a fully-funded three-year CHASE doctoral studentship, jointly supervised within the Departments of Politics and International Studies (SOAS University of London), History, Classics and Archaeology (Birkbeck College, University of London), and the Arab and African Research Center (AARC) in Egypt.
Project
The studentship will support interdisciplinary (Politics and History) research examining the dynamics and dilemmas of transnational solidarity as exemplified in Egypt’s role as sponsor of South ern African liberation movements during the 1960s. This will be one of the first studies of its kind, contributing to scholarship on the Cold War, Afro-Asian decolonisation, and African liberation struggles’ contemporary legacies.
This project’s overall aims are to retrieve and analyse the shifting motivations, power balances, and mutual influences driving relations between the Egyptian state and the southern African liberation movements which it sponsored during the era of decolonisation, and to engage with theories of solidarity in politics and historical geography to evaluate these.
The successful candidate might focus specifically on one or a combination of the following questions: the nature of Egyptian diplomatic, financial support to, and influence on Southern African liberation movements; the place of Egypt in the political imaginaries of nationalist liberation activists’; the implications of the case study for theories of transnational solidarity; the role of Cairo as a Cold War city.
Supervision
The three supervisors will be Dr Reem Abou-El-Fadl (Politics, SOAS), Dr Hilary Sapire (History, Birkbeck) and Professor Helmi Sharawy (Director, AARC). This is an opportunity to work with two disciplinary/regional experts, and with both a scholar and former co-ordinator of African liberation movements in Egypt’s presidency (1958-1971).
Requirements
The PhD will commence in October 2022. The student will spend at least three months each at the AARC, and at archives in South Africa. Fluency in Arabic, a capacity to travel freely in Africa, and a first-class degree in Politics/History are essential.
Benefits
The candidate will benefit from two world-leading Departments, enjoying specialisms in Middle East and African politics at SOAS, with its internationally renowned research library, and expertise in global history, transnationalism, and African History at Birkbeck. Rigorous methods training will be offered at both institutions. The candidate will join the AARC’s Africanist research network and gain special access to its archives/publications. They will also participate in the University of London Southern African seminar series events and workshops.
Funding Amount
For the academic year 2022-23, the stipend will be £18,612 with London weighting. This includes enhanced stipend to cover additional travel costs relating to the project. The funding will cover UK fees.
How to Apply
Applications for this studentship must be made via the SOAS University of London application form, available at this link , by Friday 6 May 2022 at 12 noon. Applicants must provide two references in support of their application.
Candidates will be assessed by a shortlisting process, and shortlisted candidates will be interviewed. Interview outcomes will be received by the Management Board for approval.
The Essay Film Festival returns 25 March to 3 April for its 2021 edition, which this year will be held entirely online. The Essay Film Festival is supported by AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership.
How will the festival work online?
All the films will be free and open to anyone in the UK. To watch
the films, visit our online screening room, where you will be able to view all
the films at a time that suits you. The screening room does not require any
sign-ups or downloads. While most of this material will be made available for
the entire festival window (25 March to 3 April), one or two items will be up
for a more limited period, so you should check the window of availability for
each film.
What about live events?
Our programme of live events – open to audiences globally –
includes artists’ and curators’ talks, conversations with filmmakers and
discussions with critics and researchers. These will take place online, via a
platform called Collaborate, which is very simple to use. Book your place on
our website (http://www.essayfilmfestival.com),
and we will send you a link to join us on the day: again, you do not need to
create an account or download any software.
What is in the
programme this year?
For us the
essay film is a critical intervention in the world, combining a passion for investigating
reality and for asking tough questions about society with an open, inventive
and even playful approach to film language and forms of representation.
This year’s
programme reflects that dynamic ambition for the essay film, with a wide range
of contemporary and archival works from different parts of the world,
accompanied by live talks and conversations featuring artists and researchers.
Madeleine
Hunt-Ehrlich will
give a talk about her forthcoming project on Suzanne Césaire, alongside a
selection of her short films exploring alternative voices and narratives from
African-American history.
Cauleen Smith will be joining us to discuss a programme of her experimental
works reflecting her longstanding interest in Afro-futurism and jazz,
especially Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra.
Two
programmes of short films by Kevin Jerome Everson focus on themes of
labour and place, which the artist will further develop in an illustrated talk
and conversation.
From the Asian Film Archive we
share Monographs, a series of video essays responding to the
uncertainties of the pandemic from ten contemporary Asian artists, some of whom
will be speaking at the festival with critic and essayist Kevin B. Lee.
John Gianvito
will be in conversation about his latest film, Her Socialist Smile, an
historical essay about Helen Keller that foregrounds her radical politics and
commitment to social justice.
Nuria Giménez’s
My Mexican Bretzel uses found footage and literary invention to play
with the conventions of film portraiture and highlight the invisibility of
women’s histories – themes that the artist will discuss in a live conversation.
An extended programme around the
work of Jenny Brady features three of her own films and three films
curated by the artist, alongside a talk about her current research into musical
performance and the sonic practice of Alvin Lucier.
Our archival section showcases films by Med Hondo and Sidney
Sokhona, both representing critically the lives of African workers in
France in the 1970s; writer Assia Djebar’s filmic reinterpretation of colonial
travelogues and newsreels shot in Algeria; and the collaborative films of Yugantar,
India’s first feminist film collective.
This year’s programme closes with a study day devoted to
Brazilian filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho, specifically his films Man
Marked for Death, Last Conversations and the unfinished A Day in
Life.
Come and join us!
On behalf of
the Essay Film Festival: Matthew Barrington, Lauren Collee, Kieron Corless,
Catherine Grant, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Janet McCabe, Raquel Morais, Laura Mulvey,
Michael Temple
The following training opportunities are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck.
CHASE Feminist Network Small Project:
Love, Care and Mutual Aid: Resisting State Reliance
and State Violence
06 May – 10 June 2021 |
Online
*Open to women doctoral students only
In light of the state responses to Nicole Smallman and
Bibaa Henry, and more recently, Sarah Everard, and the subsequent (gendered)
violence towards protestors and students in the University, this project will
provide a space to talk about these experiences which many of us live through
and are impacted by vicariously. The project will run once every week
consecutively and will be guided by a theme (see below) which will hopefully
lend to fruitful discussions of how we can support one another through direct
action.
Session 1 | Thursday 6th May 2021|
17:30-19:00 Online Connection:
Introductory Talk, Domestic Violence and Mutual Aid and Networking
Presenter: Baljit Kaur (She/Her – Doctoral Researcher at University of Sussex)
Session 2 | Thursday 13th
May 2021| 17:30-19:00
Decolonising the
University and Beyond | Care, Inclusion and Anti-Racism in Community Projects Presenter: Nadia Buyse (She/Her – Doctoral Researcher at University of
Sussex, Community Artist and Curator at ONCA).
Session 3 |Thursday
20th May 2021 | 17:30-19:00
State Violence against
Migrants and Refugees and the Hostile Environment | The impact of Covid-19 on
Vulnerable Women and Sex Workers Presenters: Sam Pointon (She/Her – Doctoral Researcher at the University of
Essex (2022)) and Aimée Lee (She/Her – Social and Housing Care Professional and Activist)
Session 4 | Thursday 27th May 2021 | 17:30-19:00
Consent,
Gender and Early Years Education Presenter: Dr. Jade Lee (She/Her – CHASE and
SOAS University alumna and Director of Aurora Learning).
Session 5 | Thursday 3rd June 2021|
17:30-19:00
Defund/Abolish the
Police: Resisting State Reliance and State Violence Presenters: Kate Meakin (She/They – Doctoral
Researcher at the University of Sussex).
Session 6 | Thursday 10th
June 2021| 17:30-19:00
Creative
Performances/Expressions: Celebrating the Collective
Presenters: Baljit Kaur, Sam Pointon and Dr. Jade Lee.
This 1.5-hour
participative workshop from how2glu will help you to identify key outcomes and
objectives of your research and map out realistic and achievable alternative
routes to achieving them. In this way you will be able to interrogate options
and create a ‘back up plan’ should you need one in the future.
Our focus will be on how you could re-plan activities that
will achieve those intended outcomes and explore problem-solving skills and
flexible approaches that will help you adapt to change.
This workshop is aimed at those at the beginning of their PhD.
This 2.15-hour
participative workshop from how2glu will help you to identify key outcomes and
objectives of your research and map out realistic and achievable alternative
routes to achieving them. In this way you will be able to interrogate options
and create a ‘back up plan’ should you need one in the future.
Our focus will be on how you could re-plan activities that
will achieve those intended outcomes and explore problem-solving skills and
flexible approaches that will help you adapt to change.
This workshop is designed for doctoral researchers beyond the
first year of their study. Not suitable for those who have just started.
Creative writers teach in schools, universities and the community, on retreats, in theatres and in workshops. Teaching is often a key part of a writer’s career, and there are rich possibilities creative arts education across a huge range of contexts. But how do you teach creative writing? Can you? This series offers anyone considering teaching creative writing as part of their career development the opportunity to look in detail at the theory and practice of creative writing pedagogy in a variety of institutional and community settings.
The series will address the historical principles and contemporary critiques of creative writing pedagogy, and how these are responding to wider institutional and societal developments. It will consider in detail the theory and practice of employing these pedagogical skills both within and outside higher education. Attendees will be invited to reflect on future possibilities and challenges for the development of creative writing teaching, enabling a deeper awareness and knowledge of creative writing as a subject of study, a future career, and a creative practice.
Students are not expected to attend all the sessions, but the series has been designed to allow for an arc of learning from theoretical principles to practical engagement.
The sessions will take place online via Microsoft Teams, once a month for the 2020/21 academic year.
You can sign up for individual sessions using the links below:
In 2018/19 Birkbeck PhD student Samantha Brummage was successful in gaining access to a placement supported by the AHRC funded CHASE DTP. In the piece below you can read about Samantha’s experience on the placement and the skills she acquired through it.
Scourges
of gardeners, foes of council workers armed with tanks of glyphosate, trampled,
neglected, ignored: weeds are despised, yet they flourish, succeeding where
other plants fail. Tracing its etymology from Old through Middle to Modern
English, the OED defines a weed as ‘Any herbaceous plant not valued for its
usefulness or beauty, or regarded as a nuisance in the place where it is
growing.’ Gardeners generally consider plants that grow where they are unwanted
to be weeds, however much they are appreciated by the insect community.
Material Witness normally focuses on material things made by people, and how we interpret them by practical, theoretical, and historical means. This session switches emphasis, beginning with nature: the ecology of the pavement cracks, the roadside verge, the railway tracks. How have artists recognised the usefulness and beauty of weeds? How can we make the most of their vigour, tenacity, and ubiquity during this unprecedented lockdown?
This
two hour webinar will begin by exploring the deep art history of weeds through
medieval herbals, the plant-filled borders of books of hours, and Dürer’s
extraordinary ‘Great Piece of Turf’, and some interconnections with
contemporary artists’ practice. Our focus will then turn to drawing weeds,
using a variety of strategies and with a view to creating expressive
observational drawings.
This
workshop will focus on using materials that you have ready to hand. You can use
any paper, and any mark-making implements that you have to hand.
The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.
Future Pathways in Medieval and Early Modern Studies:
Academia and Beyond
Friday, 6 March and Friday 27 March
The aim of these two workshops is to explore the possible
pathways that medieval and early modern studies can open up for future careers.
Both workshops will host a group of speakers with PhDs in various aspects of
medieval and early modern studies that have since pursued a wide array of
careers. Their personal knowledge and experiences will provide the springboard
for informal roundtable discussions and exercises. These events will encourage
current postgraduate students to reflect critically on the ways in which one
can communicate and curate research and teaching expertise, while they will
also offer opportunities for new connections to be made with a variety of
individuals, institutions and sectors.
FRAMES – Friday 20 March The annual TRANSITIONS symposium has been extended with FRAMES,
a day of workshops for CHASE researchers. The workshops are Graphic Medicine
with Ian Williams and Comics as Research Practice with Nick Sousanis.
The workshops are focussed on comics and arts as part of the
research process, but are open to all research students affiliated with CHASE
institutions.
The day is divided into two workshop sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning session is Graphic Medicine with Ian Williams. The afternoon session is Comics as Research Practice with Nick Sousanis.
Transitions: New Directions in Comics
Studies is an annual one-day symposium promoting new research and
multi-disciplinary academic study of comics / comix / bande dessinée /
manga / and other forms of sequential art. The Transitions symposia have been a
fixture on the UK comics scholarship landscape, with a focus on new voices and
novel approaches in comics research. The programme emphasises a range of
approaches in research, and especially invites participation from research
students and early career researchers.
Critical Race Studies and the Premodern: Archive and Seminar
8 & 9 June | University
of Sussex
Decolonising the Curriculum (Practical Funded by the CHASE
Consortium, the Universities of East Anglia and Sussex are hosting two
postgraduate training workshops on critical race studies and the pre-modern.
This, the second of two events, will be held at The University of Sussex, 8-9
June 2020, and will focus on research. The event is designed to develop
students’ professional skills. We invite expressions of interest from all postgraduates
working in the Humanities (giving papers, designing and chairing sessions,
attending).
Auraldiversities is a series of lectures, workshops and in-situ training sessions seeking to encourage creative and critical attention towards aural diversity within the arts and humanities, with particular focus on an ecology of the ear, designed for all those researching within the Arts and Humanities, especially those with an interest in the creative, social and political dimensions of sound and listening.
These sessions specifically address the need for further
study and practice inspired by, and concerning, this specific turn in research
and focus on a particular theme led by an academic/practitioner with invited
guests selected to represent a range of approaches. A CHASE PhD candidate with
associated research interests will also give a presentation.
Sessions are purposefully multifaceted, practical, intuitive
and experimental in approach and encourage collaborative work and collective
activities:
Ethnography and Film. Exploring Labour, Technology and Mediation in the Egyptian Film Industry
Wednesday 19 February | University of Kent
The workshop will offer participants advanced training in
ethnography, applied to the context of the Egyptian Film industry. Dr El
Khachab’s workshop will outline how researchers can successfully apply
ethnographic methodologies, developed in Anthropology, to research issues about
arts and media, especially film. Dr El Khachab will outline the strategies he
developed during his PhD research to gather observations, interviews and
documentary data from creatives and technicians working in the largest and most
influential media industry in the Arab world. He will also provide participants
an insight into how he adapted the presentation of his findings from his PhD
thesis into his forthcoming monograph, The Egyptian Film Industry: Labor,
Technology, Mediation.
This workshop is aimed at CHASE students from a variety of
backgrounds and developed with an interdisciplinary audience in mind. Hence,
attending the training does not require any specialised prior knowledge or
skills, apart from an interest in the topic of the workshop.
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with over sixty books to his name. His work has won him the International Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award, and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others. He is a past chair of the Society of Authors, and on the board of a number of organisations that work with literature and free speech.
Future Pathways in Medieval and Early Modern Studies: Academia and Beyond
Friday 6 & Friday 27 March | University of Kent
The intended audience for both workshops is first and
foremost students currently undertaking PhDs in any aspect of medieval or early
modern studies (including Archaeology, History, History of Art and Literary
Studies). Students will be able to register for one or both of the workshops,
both of which will be hosted at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus. The
first workshop (‘Beyond Academia’) will take place on Friday 6 March 2020. The
second workshop (‘Early Career Academia’) will take place on Friday 27 March
2020.
Embodied Approaches to Performing Experimental Music
This training explores embodied approaches to performing experimental music, and methods of observing and reporting on research observations that arise as a result of such performance. It employs an approach to methodological training through practical, hands-on workshops.
