British Library Scholarship PhD Project

Under Northern Skies: English-speaking tourists’ encounter with Norway 1750-1930

The University of Sheffield in conjunction with the British Library (BL) is offering a PhD studentship to commence in September 2012 to investigate the experience of English-speaking tourists in Norway in the long nineteenth century. The project is based in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and the focus will be on travel writing and on the written materials produced to support the growing travel industry in Norway, such as guidebooks, phrasebooks and publicity materials, working in particular with the archives and resources of the British Library.

The project will be supervised by Professor Andrew Linn, a specialist in 19th-century Scandinavian language and culture, who will provide the lead on research into the travel writing of the period and into language works produced to help English-speaking visitors to Norway. Professor Richard Jenkins from the Department of Sociological Studies will act as second supervisor and work on issues of national and personal identity in the encounter between the tourists and those they met on their travels. Barbara Hawes, curator of Scandinavian collections at the British Library, will be able to guide you in the use of the most appropriate primary and secondary materials in the BL’s collections.

We are extremely grateful for the collaboration of the new Norwegian Museum of Tourism, which is due to open at Balestrand in western Norway in late 2013. The museum has generously offered to provide accommodation and workspace for the student at the appropriate stage of the project and, if appropriate, to mount an exhibition at the end of the project based on the research. This is a rare opportunity for outreach and for engagement with audiences beyond academia and beyond the UK.

You will have the benefit of membership of several academic networks. Prof. Linn has a grant beginning in 2012 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the experience of Norwegian migrants to the New World in the late 19th century and you will be actively involved in the activities of this project. There is a growing Centre for Nordic Studies at the university, and you will be fully involved in its activities. Within the School of English you will be encouraged to engage with research training provided on the MA course in Nineteenth-Century Studies and in the sociohistorical strand of the MA in English Language, as well as with research seminars in History and in Sociology. The new (2011) postgraduate interdisciplinary research seminar on the history of travel writing in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities is testimony to the thriving body of researchers you would be joining. It is not a prerequisite to have knowledge of a Nordic language.

The studentship will pay tuition fees at the UK/EU rate, a maintenance award at the standard RCUK rate (£13,590 in 2011-12), and a Research Training Support Grant (£500 per annum). UK, EU and Overseas students are all welcome to apply— Overseas students must pay the difference between the UK/EU and Overseas fees.

Applications should be made by 3 February 2012 using the university’s online application form –http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply

Further information is available from Prof. Andrew Linn (a.r.linn@shef.ac.uk)