Creating a Feminist Archival Praxis to Reveal Histories of Women in the UK Advertising Industry
1950's JWT female staff member
AHRC/CHASE Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD studentship in collaboration with the University of East Anglia and the History of Advertising Trust - Creating a Feminist Archival Praxis to Reveal Histories of Women in the UK Advertising Industry
Qualification type: PhD
Location: University of East Anglia, Norwich
Funding for: UK Students / International Students
Funding amount: fees and stipend at AHRC rates (for the current academic year 2024-25, the stipend rate is £19,837 non London). This includes enhanced stipend to cover additional travel costs relating to the project. Please note: this funding amount typically increases with inflation each academic year.
Closes: Monday 17 February 2025, 12 noon
Watch a recording of the webinar for this Collaborative Doctoral Award project, held 20th November 2024, to find out more from the project team:
Creating a Feminist Archival Praxis to Reveal Histories of Women in the UK Advertising Industry
Through the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-east England (CHASE), we are offering a fully funded PhD studentship with the University of East Anglia and the History of Advertising Trust.
Through this project you will:
Develop your research with UEA media scholars and archive professionals
Gain critical knowledge and skills in academic and archival settings
Have unique access to archive collections relating to the production and distribution of UK advertising materials
Explore, identify and shape a project exploring ‘invisible’ women within those collections
You will use your research to:
Reclaim these women’s stories
Offer new insights to the UK advertising industry
Promote / disseminate your research heritage
We are looking for a researcher with a background in film or media studies, with experience of archival research. The successful applicant will have their fees paid and receive a stipend to cover living expenses. We offer funding on a full or part-time basis.
The studentship
This studentship extends UEA’s current feminist-informed approach to archives to an untouched area within archive scholarship: women in the UK advertising industry. Advertising sits on the fringes of mainstream film/media history; while debates exist around the effectiveness and ideological impact of individual advertisements and campaigns, studies of advertising history tend to focus more on how women are represented within advertising materials rather than the place and experience of women within that industry. A potent creative sector, advertising has been portrayed historically via dominant patriarchal figures or approaches, leaving it ripe for reinterpretation and reassessment.
The project emerges from ongoing UEA-led archive research projects (Women in Focus: Developing a Feminist Approach to Film Archive Metadata & Cataloguing; Empowering Archivists: Applying New Tools & Approaches for Better Representation of Women in Audio-Visual Collections) and the History of Advertising Trust’s emphasis on women in their UK advertising collections, including the 2024 AdWomen exhibition.
Key objectives for the project include:
Developing a feminist approach to the history of women within the UK advertising industry between the 1950s and the 1980s (a key period for women entering the workforce)
Exploring how the traces of these women can be found, categorized, and celebrated within archive systems that tend to invisibilise the presence of women
Positioning the archive holdings and findings within existing histories of British advertising and media
Addressing how a lack of historical evidence can be exacerbated by both archive and industry practices around selection, accession, cataloguing and/or digitization
Engaging with debates around archiving and cataloguing practice in order to help HAT locate and best represent minority voices across its collections
Working with HAT to ensure relevant archival materials are digitised, detailed catalogue metadata created, and case studies made available to view
An experienced supervisory team will guide the application and development of the project:
Professor Keith M. Johnston is an expert in historical and archive-based research with over a decade of expertise in the field of moving image archives. He was director of the East Anglian Film Archive and UK lead on Women in Focus and Empowering Archivists. Those projects included engagement with archives across the UK and Ireland to develop a toolkit for archival practice as well as the delivery of toolkit-based training sessions for archivists across both countries.
Dr Lorna Richardson is an expert in digital heritage, public engagement and feminist research methodologies. As a key contributor to Women in Focus and Empowering Archivists, she has developed the project’s digital engagement elements including the use of Wikimedia as an externally-facing tool for heritage organisations.
Alistair Moir is Deputy Director at the History of Advertising Trust, having previously served as HAT Collections Record Officer and then Archives & Library Collections Manager. He holds a Master of Arts in Archive & Records Management from the University College London (UCL). This combination of experience will offer support across academic and archival approaches.
Working closely with HAT will allow the successful candidate to develop their awareness of the omissions and gender bias in archive data and cataloguing but also give opportunities to amend existing records and become an advocate for those women whose traces are discovered. The project’s initial focus on women is intended as the gateway to intersectional analyses of individuals within that industry, but also an acknowledgement of the scale of the research required to reveal the ‘traces’ of women in advertising across the period chosen, the nature of the industry records that are available, and the available metadata to identify them.
The candidate will have complete access to the HAT collections, a wealth of every medium, form and format of UK brand communications material: from original artwork and posters to TV and cinema commercials, alongside advertising statistics, market research, and trade publications. Key collections include the J. Walter Thompson London client account files which offer a rich historical source on the development of key campaigns, including correspondence and memos between agency staff. Combined with the archives of professional industry bodies and over 250 of the principal UK advertising and marketing industry journals, assessment of this rich data source will allow you to build up knowledge of the ‘invisible’ women who worked within the advertising industry, undertaking copywriting or other creative roles within different agencies.
The CDA candidate will develop academic and professional skills through UEA and industry partner engagement: academic research and writing, archival practices (including cataloguing and digitisation), archive management, and using archive assets in public engagement. UEA offers a programme of general and bespoke professional-personal skills development that includes core, subject-specific and advanced methodological training. If more bespoke skills training is required, it may be possible to apply for CHASE Cohort Development Funds.
The candidate:
The candidate will have academic experience in one of the following fields: archival and library studies, feminist media histories, film and media studies, media advertising. Knowledge of digital archiving and digital humanities methods and practices would be useful but can be gained during the PhD programme.
Project work will largely be desk-based, although semi-regular visits to the History of Advertising Trust will be needed to access collections and have meetings with HAT staff. Given HAT’s location in Raveningham (15 miles south of Norwich), access to a car would be useful to facilitate archival visits.
Essential skills/attributes:
A relevant postgraduate degree at Masters level or equivalent professional experience / qualification
Previous experience of relevant independent research including the awareness of ethical issues involved in undertaking archival research
Strong organisational skills: the ability to plan and manage your own workload to meet deadlines and to work in a proactive manner
Strong interpersonal skills; the ability to work closely with others and maintain good working relationships at all levels
Strong verbal and written communication skill: the ability to communicate complex information clearly
Experience user of relevant word processing, spreadsheet, data or e-mail software
Willingness to change and develop work and study practices
Desirable skills/attributes:
Previous experience in media preservation and/or mixed-media archive practices
An understanding of relevant techniques in the handling of archival media resources
Previous awareness of metadata and cataloguing standards within archives
Experience of debates, research and skills within Digital Humanities
Experience of conference presentation and academic publishing
How to apply
Applications for this studentship must be made via the University of East Anglia: https://www.uea.ac.uk/apply/postgraduate/research
Terms and conditions
The studentship is subject to UKRI eligibility criteria and will cover home or EU fees and stipend at UKRI rates for a maximum of four years full-time, or eight years part-time study, subject to institutional regulations.
Informal Enquiries
Informal enquiries about this collaborative project can be sent to Professor Keith M. Johnston, keith.johnston@uea.ac.uk.