PhD Studentship: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) for "The Fabric of London: Two Centuries of Fire Insurance Policies" (Faculty of History and Aviva Group)

Applications are invited for a doctoral studentship offered by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, starting in October 2025.

The studentship will be based in the Faculty of History. The successful applicant will work on a collaborative project co-supervised by Professor Amy Erickson (ale25@cam.ac.uk) and Dr Alexis Litvine in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (CamPop) and Ms Anna Stone, Archivist at Aviva Group.

Aviva and CamPop have digitised fire insurance records from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century: https://amicablecontributors.com/. Most of these policies relate to buildings in London not only the capital but also the largest city in Europe and a city dramatically growing and changing over this period.  The CDA holder will have scope to develop their own project with these sources. One option would be to focus on building history and the materials of construction. Another would be to concentrate on economic history and the ownership patterns revealed by the policies, with a prosopographical study of property owners. The temporal focus of the CDA may cover the full 170 years or a shorter time period, incorporating complementary records such as the Land Tax or rate books or the records of the London Livery Companies, as appropriate. The CDA holder will make a unique contribution to the history of London's built environment and will gain skills in palaeography, techniques of large-scale data analysis, and digital mapping. In the final year, the CDA holder will help prepare an exhibition on the archive and their own research for presentation in Norwich at Aviva's headquarters and in their central London office.

Further details of the project can be found here:

https://www.oocdtp.ac.uk/cam-cda-erickson-aviva

Funding:

The DTP studentships will provide an annual maintenance grant to cover living costs (£19,237 stipend + £600 CDA allowance pa at current rates) and university tuition fees at home fee level. The gap between the home and overseas fee rates will be covered by the University through internal co-funding for international candidates.

For more details, see: https://www.postgraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/funding.

Application process:

All applications will need to be made via the ‘Apply’ button above.

Whilst making your online application please make clear that you are applying for the project 'The fabric of London: two centuries of fire insurance policies' and indicate the supervisor leading the project (Professor Amy Erickson). When applying for study through the Postgraduate Applicant Portal, you must indicate that you would like to be considered for funding, complete the AHRC section under "Funding" and upload the OOC DTP Application Form as an additional document when completing the application through the portal.

Informal enquiries about the project should be directed to the University supervisor (ale25@cam.ac.uk).

Application deadline is Tuesday 3 December 2024.

If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please visit https://www.oocdtp.ac.uk/how-to-apply#tab-2276201.

Please quote reference GA43305 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.

We want to encourage the widest range of potential students to study for this studentship and are committed to welcoming students from different backgrounds to apply. We particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.

The University values diversity and is committed to equality of opportunity.

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