PhD Studentship - Heads above Water: Representing Fishers and Fishing Culture

University of Hull

Qualification Type:	PhD
Location:	Kingston upon Hull
Funding for:	UK Students
Funding amount:	£21,196
Hours:	Full Time

Placed On:	12th December 2025
Closes:	1st February 2026

Supervisor(s)

• Dr Anna Fitszer University of Hull
• Dr Magnus Johnson University of Hull
• Professor Mark Riley University of Liverpool

Enquiries email: livingwww@hull.ac.uk

Subject areas

• Physical & Environmental Sciences
• Languages, Literature & Culture

Project description

For centuries, men and women have made a living from the sea and endangered their lives on its waters. Once the backbone of close-knit communities, fishing families are now more fractured; labouring under the pressures of government policy and the impact of climate change. Consequently, some of the traditions and practices reliably passed from one generation to the next are as under threat as the places fishing families call home. Coastal towns and villages across the UK have historically been places of work, pleasure and recuperation; working harbours often occupying a landscape attractive to visitors. But the balance has shifted.  Socio-economic challenges and diminishing fish stocks are impacting small-scale fishing (SSF) enterprises in locations which are also seeing a rise in the number of properties bought to let or as second homes. Forced to fish miles offshore or find alternative sources of income, some fishers are leaving the industry altogether. The extent to which this impacts North Sea communities, for example, as well as the infrastructure and appearance of their environment, differs from place to place. Some localities, such as Staithes, a village some ten miles north of Whitby, bear only the traces of a once vibrant fishing culture; others, including Bridlington and Scarborough variously support fishing and tourism.

This project aims to explore perceptions of fishers and fishing culture as mediated through literature and other creative practices including art and song. It invites investigation of the extent to which the lone fisherman or woman, and the communities to which they belong, may have been romanticised over time, misrepresented or forgotten. The new agreement reached between the UK and EU in April this year – which included post-Brexit arrangements for access rights, quotas and investment – has brought fishing communities once more into focus. Literature enables empathy: how might non-specialist understanding of ongoing debates about the management of our fisheries, and the impact this has on communities and cultures be shaped by storytelling? Reading existing accounts of lives at sea in fiction, poetry or memoir, this project has scope to accentuate new voices and testimonies. Collectively, this work informs future policies of place: working to reconcile the needs of fishing communities, tourism, and conservation.