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 PhD will be hosted by the University of Aberdeen under the lead supervision of Professor David Anderson (University of Aberdeen), with Dr Michael Stratigos (University of Aberdeen) and Jim MacPherson (UHI Orkney) as co-supervisors. The successful applicant will be part of an interdisciplinary cohort of North-Sea Heritage in Transitions students based in Aberdeen, Orkney and Shetland.
In June 2025 the Scottish First Minister formally apologised to Gypsy/Traveller communities for the so-called “Tinker Experiments”; decades of state policy that sought to end nomadism in Scotland by forcing families off the road. The visual, ecological and creative practice of their travelling way of life remains largely unrecorded and unprotected.
Stopping places (greens, foreshore, wood-ends and roadside sites) used by Scottish Gypsy/Traveller (Nawken) families for generations are disappearing from the North-East landscape, and no systematic visual record of them exists. Where Travellers do appear in Scottish art, photography and archives, they were most often pictured by others, on the others' terms. Central to the project will be understanding the harmony or dissonance of visual artefacts to the Nawken community. This project will support a PhD student to work with local Nawken communities in Aberdeenshire, Moray, and Orkney to document Nawken landscapes visually, and thereby record and reclaim a unique and threatened living heritage infrastructure at a time of transition new restructuring and enclosures.
Combining the visual arts and participatory creative practice, the project will produce the first sustained visual study of Nawken stopping places and mobile dwellings in the North-East. The successful candidate will develop their own focus within four orientating questions:
- How have Nawken stopping places, dwellings and journeys shaped (and been shaped by) the North-East landscape? Special attention is directed to biodiversity and the unique ecologies of stopping places.
- How have Travellers been represented or erased in Scottish art, photography and archives, by whom and on whose terms?
- What can architectures of mobility (bow tents, wagons and caravans as vernacular architecture and craft) reveal about ephemeral dwellings, their long-term impacts to local ecology and adaptive use of land in rural and coastal contexts?
- How can participatory visual practice (community photography, film and counter-mapping) document stopping places as living heritage, and what can co-produced imagery do that institutionally made records cannot?
The project rests on two foundations: visual documentation and engaged creative practice with the community around which the student will shape their own emphasis. In the field, the student might conduct a photographic and spatial survey of surviving stopping places and mobile dwellings as time-critical vernacular heritage that are disappearing.
The project is designed to work in collaboration with local museums and Nawken organisations to help gain access to collections and to key knowledge holders. The student may wish to work in collaboration with Nawken Assembly or the Cultural Tides project at Aberdeenshire Museums, or other community groups. The supervisory team would encourage the student to participate in an exhibition around the history of stopping places as part of the PhD project.
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 first-class or upper second-class degree and/or master's degree in a relevant discipline including anthropology, art history, architectural history, archaeology, heritage and museum studies. Candidates of Nawken heritage or with existing work experience with Nawken communities will be given preference.
Enquiries are encouraged, for further information please contact Professor David Anderson (david.anderson@abdn.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_UOA_DA
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
- Kabachnik P. 2014. “Where can we put our homes?” Gypsies and Travelers in the English Green Belt. JCultural Geography 31:280–303.
- Shubin S. 2011. “Where can a Gypsy stop?” Rethinking mobility in Scotland. Antipode 43:494–524.
- Voiculescu C. 2014. Voyagers of the smooth space. Emotion, Space and Society 13:24–31.
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