Our colleague Dr Michael Brown has successfully secured AHRC/NWCDTP Collaborative Doctoral Award funding for a PhD studentship to be undertaken in partnership with Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life in Carlisle (CMoML). This highly competitive scheme promotes collaborative research between universities and non-academic partners, including in the museum and heritage sector.

The PhD project, entitled ‘Emotions, Objects, and “Affective Curatorship” in the British Regimental Museum’, was conceived by Dr Brown and will be co-supervised with Professor Corinna Peniston-Bird of Lancaster University and Jules Wooding of CMoML. It explores the regimental museum as an emotional archive and considers how we might use the concept of ‘emotional objects’ and ‘affective curatorship’ to shape more complex, engaging, and inclusive, histories of the British army, British empire, and the experience of war and military life more generally.

This award contributes to Lancaster History Department’s long-standing strengths in military history and regional heritage, and further enhances our links to external partners in the region.

The student will start in October 2025 and recruitment will begin soon. Anyone interested in this opportunity is urged to contact Dr Brown at m.brown23@lancaster.ac.uk.