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Durham History Department
Student walking outside the Department of History

Funded PhD Opportunities

Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships

Funding competitions includes opportunities for PhD students to work with partner organisations, which are not higher education institutions, but are, for instance, museums, galleries, archives, heritage organisations, businesses, or charities.

Anyone interested in developing a Collaborative Doctoral Award partnership should contact the Director of Postgraduate Research, Dr. Toby Osborne.

Supervisor-led Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships have, in the past, included partnerships with Tyneside Cinema, the Bowes Museum, and Blackfriars Restaurant.

Postgraduate funding opportunities

Ready to begin your PhD in 2026/27? Apply for our studentships, including the new Transformative Humanities awards. Learn more and apply.

Apply £5K scholarship

Learn more

Click below to learn more about our current and forthcoming PhD projects

Current Opportunities

This page contains information about our projects that are still open to applications
Stairs in the History Department

Forging Social Solidarities during Religious Wars

This project, part of the 'Inventing Futures' programme, asks how far a society can hold together when civil war breaks out because of religious differences.
St Bartholomew Day Massacre (François Dubois)

AIDS, Inequality and Religious Ethics of Care in 1980s and 90s Britain

This project radically rethinks the place of religion in shaping public responses to AIDS, complicating narratives of secularisation in modern Britain

Images and Empire in British Military Collections: The Photographic Archive of the Durham Light Infantry

Working in partnership with The Story, this project centres photography as a site of identity formation for the DLI regiment, the local community, and empire itself
A black and white image of soldiers from the Durham Light Infantry in a tank in a wooded area

A Woman's Work: Photographic Histories of Northeast England Through the Lens of Daisy Edis and the J.R. Edis Studio

This project uses the work of Daisy Edis (1888-1964) and the J.R. Edis Studio to interrogate histories of photography in Durham
A row of buildings in Beamish museum

The Growth and Decline of North-East Jewish Communities, 1881-2000

This project explores why the Jewish communities of the North East, which grew rapidly in the period after 1881, declined dramatically in the later twentieth century
Person reading Torah

Oral History, the British Cultural Imaginary, and the Lives of the SOE’s Amateur Agents

This studentship explores how the wartime SOE service of selected officers and agents shaped their later lives, and how such careers influenced post-war Britain
The audience at a demolition class at Milton Hall in 1944

Making Chocolate in the British Atlantic World: Foodways, Consumption, and Heritage

This PhD studentship explores early modern chocolate between the late sixteenth and eighteenth centuries
A cocoa tree and roasting hut

The Transmission of Taste

This project examines medieval English recipe collections during a crucial period in their evolution, looking at evidence for changes in taste
A group of people watch and smile as a man chops food

Nostalgia and the Transformation of Working-Class Heritage

This project aims to develop stories that resituate sites of working-class heritage in global and colonial contexts
Easington Colliery

Constitution-making in Sudan

This doctoral research project looks at previous moments of possible change in Sudan, and why these ultimately failed
Globe of Africa