About the Project
This fully funded PhD project is part of the North-Sea Heritage in Transitions (NHT) AHRC Doctoral Focal Award between the University of Aberdeen, University of the Highlands and Islands, and Robert Gordon University, which addresses the role of art history, visual arts and creative practice in a region undergoing cultural transition. NHT supports place-based doctoral research to strengthen and empower a regionally-significant cultural workforce for a national and international creative economy.
The successful candidate will be based at the Centre for Island Creativity in UHI Shetland under the lead supervision of Professor Roxane Permar (UHI Shetland), with Dr Siún Carden (UHI Shetland) and Dr Rebecca Macklin (University of Aberdeen) as additional supervisors.
The coastal communities of Scotland have rich and distinct cultural traditions and forms of place-based knowledge that are deeply tied to place. Together they contribute to long term environmental and cultural resilience. And yet, social, technological, and environmental transitions threaten the survival and continued development of these practices.
Living heritage - the traditions, practices, knowledge, and expressions that communities actively maintain and share across generations - informs place-based and community-led research by shifting focus from static monuments to everyday social practices, valuing lived experience, connection to environment and community memory. As such it functions as both a custodian of collective memory and a vehicle for nurturing intergenerational knowledge that contributes to long term environmental and cultural resilience.
This PhD at UHI Shetland examines how environmental change intersects with cultural memory and community identity in rural and coastal contexts through creative practice. It asks how living heritage can inform genuine place-based and community-led research that emerges from and with the communities it concerns. It is practice based and employs methods drawn from socially engaged art to bridge the cultural heritage of North Sea coastal communities with lived experience, cultivating and recovering alternative ways of thinking rooted in ethical relationships, shared stewardship, and mutual learning (Meighan, 2023; Nı́ Mhathú na, 2022).
The research will explore the interconnectedness of people and place, including, potentially, the more-than-human world. A key aspect of the research is the consideration of indigeneity as a guide to relational ethics, place-based knowledge, and cultural continuity. The entanglements of marine ecosystems, cultural landscapes, and community wellbeing underpin the project. While specific topics will emerge through the research, themes could include, for example, loss of identity in relation to place and intergenerational, grief and inheritance; women as keepers of history; collectors and holders of memory; environmental forms of knowledge, place-based language traditions and storytelling.
This research will be practice-based and employ, for example, some but not necessarily all of the following:
- creative practice, e.g., through socially engaged art
- participatory design where the research is shaped by community input from inception to dissemination;
- intangible Cultural History as a framework for methodologies and practices drawn from ethnography, participatory action research, oral history
- ecological fieldwork; citizen science: tools and training for local environmental monitoring and data gathering
- community peer review, e.g., incorporating CLEAR Lab’s framework for community self- representation, public accountability, and the right to ethnographic refusal (CLEAR Lab, 2023).
Strong relationships within the community are important to this project. Relationships will be developed through the research; the researcher could already be embedded in their community and bring existing relationships to the research project. Relationships may be developed out with organisational contexts. Partnerships with local organisations will be supported as appropriate, including, e.g., those linked to family history, local history, fishing. While the home partner for the project is UHI Shetland, the research might be focused on a different region of the Highlands and Islands, and potentially in comparison with Orkney. Support for the research is confirmed with Shetland Arts Development Agency and the Shetland Museum and Archives as well as partners throughout the North East of Scotland.
The supervisory team, combining expertise in anthropology, creative practice, island studies, the environmental humanities, Indigenous studies and gender studies, will ensure that the candidate receives robust and wide-ranging support and guidance across both all dimensions of the work.
North-Sea Heritage in Transitions Training Programme
Each studentship will benefit from NHT’s bespoke training programme developed by the three partner institutions and in collaboration with international project partner, the University of Stavanger. Further information on the training on offer can be found on our website.
Candidate Background
Applicants should hold a good honours degree (2:1 or above) in a relevant discipline, e.g. Creative Practice, Anthropology, Cultural Heritage, or a related discipline. A Master's level qualification in a relevant discipline is desirable, but not essential, as well as a demonstrable understanding of the research area. A postgraduate degree in social art practice is desirable and/or experience of socially engaged art practice.
Enquiries are encouraged, for further information please contact Professor Roxane Permar (roxane.permar@uhi.ac.uk).
Promoting equality, diversity and inclusion is core to the AHRC North-Sea Heritage in Transitions Doctoral Focal Award. We actively encourage applications from diverse career paths, backgrounds, and all sections of the community, regardless of age, disability, race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation and transgender status, amongst other protected characteristics.
We also invite applications from those returning from a career break, professional practice or other roles. We typically require a minimum 2:1 in your first degree (or equivalent), but exceptions can be made where applicants can demonstrate excellence in alternative ways, including, but not limited to, performance in master’s courses, professional placements, internships or employment experience – this will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and is dependent upon approval from the relevant host institution. We offer flexible study arrangements such as part-time study (minimum 50%), however this does depend on the nature of the project/research so will be assessed individually.
Application Procedure
The full application procedure can be found on our website.
Please ensure you follow the application procedure carefully, as we cannot consider incomplete or incorrectly submitted applications.
This project ID is NHT_UHI_RP
Funding Notes
This fully funded, 42-month PhD project is offered through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) North Sea Heritage in Transitions Doctoral Focal Award.
The studentship provides an additional six months for placements, work experience, or writing up. It is open to UK and international applicants, but international recruitment via AHRC funding is capped at 30%.
Funding covers tuition fees, a tax-free stipend at the applicable UKRI rate (£21,383 for the 2026/27 academic year), and access to a Research Training Support Grant for research activities.
Please note we cannot fund visa costs or healthcare surcharges for international students.
References
- CLEAR Lab. (2023). Community Peer Review. Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research.
- Meighan, P. J. (2023). Dù thchas, a Scottish Gaelic Methodology to Guide Self-Decolonization and Conceptualize a Kincentric and Relational Approach to Community-Led Research. Genealogy, 7(1)
- Nı́ Mhathú na, D. (2022). Dù thchas and the Ecologies of Belonging: Reclaiming Indigenous Environmental Knowledge in the Scottish Highlands. Environmental Humanities, 14(2), 1– 20
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