Two Fully-funded PhD Studentships at Oxford

Funded through TORCH | The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

For more information on these studentships: http://torch.ox.ac.uk/childhoodstudentships

Applicants are sought for two PhD (DPhil) studentships as part of an interdisciplinary project on ‘Childhood maltreatment and lifetime resilience’ at University of Oxford. One student will work in Faculty of History on ‘Child abuse and neglect in mid-twentieth-century Britain’. The other student will work in Department of Experimental Psychology on ‘Child maltreatment and psychopathology: an investigation of risk and resilience’. 

This project asks how people, variously, find ways to make live-able lives following abuse and neglect in childhood. The strengths of historical and psychological approaches are combined innovatively to enable the contextualised, multi-level study of processes that develop resilience across the life-course. Students will benefit from co-supervision in the humanities (Dr Siân Pooley) and medical sciences (Dr Lucy Bowes). Students’ interests will shape the project’s foci, but will examine these broad areas.

The history student will use archival and published sources to explore changing understandings and provision for abused and neglected children in mid-twentieth-century Britain. They will focus on children’s diverse experiences and their attitudes to the lives they made following maltreatment.

The psychology student will learn and use advanced statistical skills to examine long-term psychological impacts of exposure to child maltreatment and identify pathways to resilience across the life-course. This involves secondary data analysis of studies that tracked people from birth to adulthood.

Award value

The studentships will cover University and College fees and provide a stipend (tax-free maintenance grant) of at least £14,000 for the three years. There will also be a generous annual allowance for research expenses. The student will be part of a rich interdisciplinary research environment at Oxford and will – with the rest of the project team – use their research findings to engage with contemporary social policy and practice.

Deadline for applications: 13 March 2015

For more information and how to apply: http://torch.ox.ac.uk/childhoodstudentships