‘Spitting Image: political satire in Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries’: AHRC Collections & Communities in the East of England Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CC-EE CDP) PhD Studentship

About the Project

The University of Exeter (UoE) alongside University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives (CULA) are pleased to announce a fully-funded Collaborative doctoral studentship, from 1 October 2026, under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Meredith Hale (UoE) and Dr Christopher Burgess (CULA) in association with Dr Neil Ewen (UoE) and Kevin Roberts (CULA). The student will undertake research at both the Cambridge University Libraries and Archives and the University of Exeter, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP-funded students across the UK.

Eligibility headlines:

• We encourage applications from a diverse range of people, from different backgrounds and career stages.
• Students should have a Masters Degree in a relevant subject or demonstrate relevant equivalent experience.
• The studentship is open to both home and international applicants.
• The studentship can be studied either full or part-time.
• Further details below in section ‘Eligibility’.

This research studentship is one allocated to CC-EE by the AHRC. The successful student will be expected to spend time carrying out research and gaining relevant experience with the project partners, Cambridge University Libraries and Archives.

Project Overview

Spitting Image (SI), co-created by Peter Fluck and Roger Law, radically reinvented Britain’s tradition of political satire for the television era with puppets caricaturing Britain’s political and cultural elite. When it first aired in February 1984, The Guardian argued that ‘nothing like it has been done on television before’ and The Daily Express described it as ‘in appallingly bad taste...vicious and sick’. It achieved widespread popularity, won BAFTA, Emmy, and Grammy awards, and ran for eighteen seasons on ITV (1984-1996), two seasons on Britbox (2020-21), and now features on Youtube.

‘Spitting Image: political satire in Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries’ will be the first in-depth analysis of one of the most important political satirical projects in modern Britain. It considers the nature, function, and reception of SI in a rapidly changing media environment and has been made possible by the donation of the unique and expansive Roger Law archive to CULA in 2018.

This project examines SI and its impact in two very different moments in Britain: first, its original run between 1984 and 1996, a period dominated by Thatcherism and the rise of New Labour; and, second, its reboots in 2020 and 2025 in what has become a distinctly more multicultural and media-saturated environment. At the heart of this project is an exploration of how the tropes and stereotypes inherent to political satire are formulated and received over time and how significant shifts in attitudes towards identity, race, gender and inequality have affected one of the most important genres in British visual history.

Aims and objectives of the project include: 1) undertaking the first in-depth analysis of one of the most important political-satirical projects in 20th and 21st century Britain; 2) making use of Roger Law's unique archive, the varied academic and object-based expertise of the supervisory team, and direct contact with SI creators to produce an original contribution to scholarship on political satire; 3) thoroughly examining a portion of the SI archive (of the student’s choosing) and producing both academic and public-facing material for CULA’s Digital Library; and 4) developing an innovative transdisciplinary approach that addresses the material and performative as well as the cultural, social and political aspects of the subject.

The following research questions provide a starting point for the student’s investigations; they will be free to choose their own focus based on their individual interests:

1. What does the archive reveal about the conception and production of SI?
2. How did the creators of SI engage with Britain’s tradition of political satire, from the ‘golden age’ of satire (18th and 19th century) to the satire boom of the 1960s? What is SI’s contribution to the history of political satire in Britain?
3. How did the conception and production of SI develop over its continuing life?
4. What impact has SI had on UK political and cultural discourse?
5. What role do subjects such as gender, class and race, play in the original and reboots? How has the reception of SI changed over time?
6. How has SI been adapted in its various international franchises (Russia, Portugal, South Africa, Nigeria) and how has its approach been received?

For further information regarding this studentship and to apply for it, please visit the following website: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/funding/award/?id=5850

Funding Notes

Home (UK) or International tuition fees and an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate of £21,805 per year (2026/27 rate) plus an additional CDP maintenance payment of £600 per year.