Collaborative Doctoral Awards – Projects available

Information Session

If you missed the Information Session held on 4th December, you can catch up on the presentation slides here


2024/25 Collaborative Doctoral Award Projects Recruiting

The collaborative doctoral awards open for applications are listed below.

  • Intersection and Identity: Exploring the Professional and Personal Lives of Post-War Black Nurses in Britain
    Nurse training in Acton Hospital, London c.1958. (Credit: Royal College of Nursing Archive)

    CDA in collaboration between Queen Mary University of London and the Royal College of Nursing

    Primary academic supervisor: Dr Leslie James (Queen Mary University of London)

    Collaborative Partner supervisor: Dr Sarah Chaney (Royal College of Nursing)

    Collaborative Partner lead contact: As above

    Secondary academic supervisor: Dr Rhodri Hayward (Queen Mary University of London)

    Co-academic supervisor: Dr Jenny Bangham (Queen Mary University of London)

    In 1969, 19-year-old Neslyn Watson-Druée arrived in England from Jamaica to start her nurse training. She undertook fieldwork practice as a health visitor in Brixton, where she ‘came face to face with abject poverty’ for the first time and ‘face to face with being ashamed about being black’. ‘I didn’t understand history.’ She later reflected in an oral history in the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) collection. ‘I didn’t understand economics and I didn’t understand how society worked.’

    An intersectional approach to caring – between race and class, between professional and personal identities, between healthcare, politics and society – will open up new angles on Black British history, the history of the welfare state, and of empire and decolonisation. How did nurses integrate the varied approaches to nursing that they brought to the profession? The archive for this project allows for a transnational examination of how nursing practices around the world interacted in Britain, through journals and professional organisations as sites of knowledge exchange, as well as more informal routes.

    This project will draw on RCN collections including organisational history, personal papers of nurses, records of other nursing organisations, textbooks, journals, photos and oral histories with nurses. We expect the student to adopt an empirical approach through a close reading of these primary sources, alongside secondary literature on migration, Black British history, colonialism and the legacy of empire. They will carry out additional oral history interviews with nurses and support workers, to be deposited in the RCN archive. They will develop their research questions in a collaborative way, engaging nurses through the RCN Diversity Network and Library and Archive events, as well as sessions with community and special interest groups.

    We particularly welcome applications from students who identify as People of Colour, BAME and/or part of Black and Global Majority racial and ethnic groups.

    For queries specific to the project, please contact the project’s lead supervisor Leslie James on leslie.james@qmul.ac.uk

    Please note – the application window for this project has been extended. The deadline to submit your LAHP application is Tuesday 26th March at 5pm. Applications should be submitted via the online portal.

    Please also ensure that you have submitted your application for a PhD place to Queen Mary University of London prior to submitting your CDA application to LAHP.

2024/25 Collaborative Doctoral Award Applications



Timeline


Please also check our FAQs page before you submit your application.

The list of CDA studentships funded by LAHP since 2018 is available here

Our Collaborative Doctoral Award Case Studies are available here

Back to the top