New collaborative doctoral opportunity at Queen Mary

[Kim Solga]

The Department of Drama, Queen Mary University of London welcome applications from suitably qualified candidates for an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with Duckie.

Duckie in the Community: Performance, Audience and Social Engagement

This Collaborative Doctoral Award offers an exciting opportunity to pursue a fully funded PhD with a leading international centre for research in socially engaged performance with one of London’s most innovative performance companies.

Project Description

This project focuses on the ‘social turn’ in contemporary performance in the wake of the proliferation of participatory arts practices in the 1990s, focused on a case study of Duckie, a London-based performance collective. Created in 1995 in the context of emergent queer movements, Duckie produce interactive audience experiences that combine popular forms – music, comedy, cabaret and clubbing – with experimental performance. Duckie has also collaborated with community arts organisations and groups and run projects using non-institutionalised art therapy. Duckie’s interactive participatory performance projects are increasingly driven by a desire to engage audiences in addition to its core lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) constituency, especially with respect to socially marginalised groups (e.g. older working class people; people with alcohol and drug addictions; people who are homeless or vulnerably housed). The diversity of Duckie’s work in terms of form and audience affords an excellent opportunity to investigate socially engaged performance practices in relation to the social and cultural contexts in which it is produced (e.g. LGBTQ politics and histories, poverty, addiction, aging, geography), its impact on audiences, and trends in applied, community and socially engaged performance, and criticism.

The successful applicant will be supervised by Catherine Silverstone at Queen Mary and Simon Casson and Dicky Eton at Duckie.

The award will commence on or around 22 September 2014. 

Eligibility

All applicants should meet the AHRC's academic criteria and residency requirements.  Please see the AHRC’s Training Grant Funding Guide and the Research Councils UK’s Conditions of Research Council Training Grants

http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Training%20Grant%20Funding%20Guide%202014-15.pdf

http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/RCUK-prod/assets/documents/documents/TermsConditionsTrainingGrants.pdf

Applicants should normally hold, or be studying for, a Master's degree in Drama, Theatre or Performance Studies or a cognate discipline (e.g. Cultural Studies). Please see below for the Candidate Profile.

How to Apply

To make an application please complete the College’s online postgraduate application form (www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgrcoursefinder/index.html -- please click the link for Drama to access the form). You will need to upload your CV, degree certificates, transcripts, TOFEL/IELTS scores (if applicable), statement of purpose, research proposal and writing sample (see further particulars for more details). You will also need to arrange for two references to be submitted.

For further particulars about the project and the requirements of the statement of purpose, proposal and writing sample, and advice on selecting referees and submitting references, please see:

www.sed.qmul.ac.uk/drama/postgraduate/phd/funding/index.html

Candidate Profile

The Department Drama is committed to appointing the very best candidates to our PhD programme. To apply you should have a good first degree (BA Honours or equivalent), at first class standard (or upper second class with clear evidence of 1st class work), and/or a Masters qualification (at Merit or above) in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies or a cognate discipline. The criteria for the appointment of the student will be the strength of (a) the candidate's academic profile and relevant professional experience, (b) the quality of the proposal, statement of purpose and writing sample, (c) the fit between the candidate's profile, proposal and the project brief, and (d) the ability of the student to complete the project on time.

Application Deadline

The deadline for receipt of applications is 5 pm, Wednesday 30 April 2014.

Interviews

It is anticipated that interviews will be held on Tuesday 20 May or Wednesday 21 May 2014.

Further Information

Applicants seeking further information about the studentship are invited to contact Dr Catherine Silverstone at c.silverstone at qmul.ac.uk. Applicants who would like further information about postgraduate research in Drama more generally are invited to contact Drama’s Director of Graduate Studies, Dr Martin Welton (m.welton at qmul.ac.uk).

About the Department of Drama: www.sed.qmul.ac.uk/drama/index.html

About Queen Mary, University of London:  www.qmul.ac.uk

About Duckie: http://duckie.co.uk

About the Arts and Humanities Research Council: www.ahrc.ac.uk    
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Please note that I am on personal leave from Western until June 2014.
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