Re-storying the Sussex Weald Garden: Exotics, Empire and Ecobiography.
Wakehurst Mansion Visual Air © RBG Kew Sept 2023
AHRC/CHASE Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD studentship in collaboration with University of Sussex and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Qualification type: PhD
Location: Brighton / East Sussex
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 CHASE Collaborative Doctoral Award webinar, held 12th November 2024 - find out more about what a CHASE CDA Studentship can offer you, hear from the project teams for three of this year’s CDA projects, and get tips on applying from our student panel. The following projects took part in this webinar:
Domesticating ‘Invalid Furniture,’ c. 1850-1914
Re-storying the Sussex Weald Garden: Exotics, Empire and Ecobiography
Coastal Heritage and Socio-Economic Decline on the Isle of Sheppey: Learning from the lost village of Elmley
Re-storying the Sussex Weald Garden: Exotics, Empire and Ecobiography
Applications are invited for a funded collaborative PhD between the University of Sussex and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew), investigating the plants and people of three estates in the Sussex High Weald. This PhD will offer a unique opportunity to reassess the individual and shared histories of Wakehurst, Nymans and Sheffield Park, whose owners commissioned new landscaping schemes featuring ‘exotic’ species in the early 20th century. Beyond the beauty of these gardens lies a challenging history of horticultural dealing and nurture, late-imperial trading and environmental change, told through the related life stories of people and plants. Through using archives recording the development of these gardens in Sussex and original research into European and global botanical and cultural trade, the research will enable new perspectives on the gardens’ development, offering also the opportunity to support RBG Kew (which manages and funds Wakehurst) and the National Trust (which owns all 3 estates) in critically learning more about their own histories which can then be deployed in engaging both existing and new publics.
Research aims
To increase understanding of the collaborative and networked nature of gardening in the late imperial era, highlighting designers, gardeners, labourers, plant collectors and indigenous intermediaries in a context of pan-European and global trade.
To understand contemporary and ongoing impacts of exotic plant introductions on local environments; and on large-scale plant extractions from source regions.
To explore new modes of storytelling about our connection with, and responsibility to, non-human species.
Research methods
This interdisciplinary research will be informed by environmental history; landscape and place-making; social history; gender, class, race, sexuality, decolonial studies, life writing and botany. For the project to be feasibly completed, the researcher will be supported to use qualitative network analysis and focus on a small number of case studies of people and plants. They will not be expected to have detailed botanical knowledge. The historical aspects of the research will be largely reliant on the archival resources based in Sussex and at Kew Gardens, London.
Re-storying these gardens using new sources, methods and perspectives will transform their associations within Sussex and beyond. Through the frames of RBG Kew and the National Trust, properties often perceived as quintessentially English will be enriched through new multicultural histories, in which empire will be represented as a complex, diverse, and transnational phenomenon, and thus aligning with broader moves to revise nationalist historiography. Further, the project will develop original and creative methods for conceptualising the interdependence of plant and human lives in the emergent field of Plant Humanities in the context of climate change.
Training Opportunities
The University of Sussex provides extensive support for doctoral students. Its University Researcher Development Programme provides year-round training and development opportunities matching Vitae's Researcher Development Framework. The School of Media, Arts and Humanities (MAH), through its Research Institute, supports researchers to organise workshops and participate in Doctoral conferences and events such as the Festival of Ideas (part of the annual Brighton Festival). Bibliographic skills, ethical and legal issues, health and safety as well as knowledge on intellectual property rights and publishing are delivered in small group sessions to ensure the needs of researchers and their specific discipline are met. Regular opportunities are also available to students to supplement this provision through Doctoral School programmes by means of seminars and practical workshops.
The researcher will be specifically supported in methods training to use qualitative network analysis, case study-shaping and life writing including ecobiographical approaches. They will not be expected to have detailed botanical knowledge. However, RBG Kew will support training in general botanical knowledge and use of appropriate archives. With Kew’s support, Kew PhD students are also very successful in applying to internal and external funds, e.g., for travel or summer schools. The student will join a cohort of about 20 Interdisciplinary Research students at Kew, 14 of them funded by AHRC and will enjoy staff-level access to collections plus other benefits.
Partner Resources
RBG Kew offers opportunities to gain professional skills. This may include writing blog posts (the Kew website has a wide reach, receiving 55m visits in 2023); developing learning materials for schools or community groups; supporting creation of new visitor trails; offering guided tours. They may also choose to take up a placement within a department of their choosing. There will be opportunities to interact with scientists and horticulturalists at Kew alongside critical and creative artists and writers at Sussex.
Research Environment
The student will be situated in the School of Media, Art and Humanities (Cultural Studies and History) and with a third supervisor in the School of Global Studies (Geography). The University of Sussex is home to the Centre for World Environmental History and the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, which will be available for the doctoral student to engage with international and interdisciplinary research. Other research centres and networks at the University including the Library and the Keep archives and a range of Equality, Inclusion and Diversity networks, provide opportunities for interdisciplinary training via informal seminars, reading groups and developmental support. Training opportunities will be available to the applicant at Sussex via the Researcher School and the CHASE network.
This studentship is open to both UK and International students. We would be interested in hearing from candidates from diasporic or Global South backgrounds, and particularly candidates from the source regions of the exotic plants introduced to the three estates i.e. South Asia, East Asia and South America.
The candidate:
Essential skills/attributes:
In addition to an undergraduate degree in a relevant subject such as History, English Literature, Environmental Studies or Human Geography, and a master’s degree or equivalent professional experience, you will have experience of archival research.
At RBG Kew and the NT you will be working with a range of practitioners across different departments, so an ability to work as part of a team and good interpersonal skills will be important. A readiness to travel to the three properties and to archives at Kew Gardens and East and West Sussex and potentially to international archives will be necessary.
Desirable skills/attributes:
Experience of communicating project findings to wider audiences, in the form of talks, blog posts, tours, etc.
Experience of engagement with the heritage sector
Experience of community engagement projects.
How to apply
Applications for this studentship must be made via the University of Sussex application form https://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/phd/apply
Terms and conditions
The studentship is subject to UKRI eligibility criteria and will cover home or international 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 m.jolly@sussex.ac.uk.