The Horror of Place-Based Harms (Project ID: LEV26/SC/HSS/NALLY)

About the Project

We are inviting applications for a doctoral candidate to join our team, working on the Leverhulme Trust project, ‘The Horror of Place-Based Harms.’ The project explores extra-familial harms – harms that young people experience outside the family home in peer groups, neighbourhoods and community settings – and how the places where these harms occur can be better understood and made safer. It will draw on transdisciplinary approaches to do this, seeking inspiration from horror and the Gothic.

As part of your PhD, you will identify a taxonomy of horror and adjacent genres such as the Gothic to assess the depiction of the child/young person in relation to their environment. This taxonomy may include films/TV shows, books, graphic novels - for example, Stranger Things (2016-2026), 28 Years Later (2025), or folk horror material such as Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley (2019). You will be encouraged to think about the social value of genre fiction, as well as the differing conventions in genre-based narratives. You will be comfortable with evaluating the key themes of texts and will contribute to identifying case study material for use with young people in regional workshops. You will have a strong interest in the idea of place and social geography to theorise your work, and you will be invited to foster readings of several theoretical positions, including the idea of ‘storylistening’ and ‘restorying’ as public humanities practices. You will need to be an empathic, caring and sensitive individual who has a strong sense of the importance of social inclusion, equality and diversity.

Ideally, you will have an MA specialism in Literature or Film (2:1 or above), alongside a strong interest in horror studies, young people, education, transdisciplinary methodologies, and the role of literary and filmic texts in social contexts. You will be encouraged to contribute your ideas to the project across the duration of the PhD whilst developing your own unique perspective for your research. You will be working both autonomously and as part of a team, and will be invited to participate in project workshops, publication opportunities, and training to support your studies. You will learn to analyse ethnographic data derived from the project workshops, and will be able to apply these findings to your own research. You will have a high level of intellectual rigour, and will develop your research under the supervision of Professor Claire Nally, alongside the project’s Principal Investigator, Dr Tom Disney, and the Co-Investigator, Dr Angelika Strohmayer, as well as a postdoctoral research fellow.

Northumbria University has a large and lively postgraduate community in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Our PhD students develop a portfolio of skills and competencies through our training programme, an annual PhD conference and the Graduate School’s Professional Development and Research Training Programme. Students are invited to the Institute of the Humanities events, are provided with funds to attend conferences with the project team, and will be able to join several of our research groups, including Horror Studies, and Modern and Contemporary Writings.

Please note, you will need a DBS check (which the university will fund), as parts of the project will involve working with young people.

Academic Enquiries

This project is supervised by Professor Claire Nally. For informal queries, please contact claire.nally@northumbria.ac.uk. For all other enquiries relating to eligibility or application process please use the email form below to contact Admissions.

Eligibility Requirements:

• Academic excellence i.e. 2:1 (or equivalent GPA from non-UK universities with preference for 1st class honours); or a Masters (preference for Merit or above); or APEL evidence of substantial practitioner achievement.
• Appropriate IELTS score, if required.
• Applicants cannot apply if they are already a PhD holder or if currently engaged in Doctoral study at Northumbria or elsewhere.

To be classed as a Home student, candidates must:

• Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or
• have settled status, or
• have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
• have indefinite leave to remain or enter.

If a candidate does not meet the criteria above, they would be classed as an International student and would not be eligible.

Applicants will need to be in the UK and fully enrolled before stipend payments can commence.

For further details on how to apply see https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/research/postgraduate-research-degrees/how-to-apply/

In your application, please include a research proposal of approximately 1,000 words and the advert reference (e.g. LEV26/…).

Deadline for applications: 29 June 2026

Start date of course: 1st October 2026

Funding Notes

The Full Time studentship is available to Home students and includes a full stipend at UKRI rates (for 2026/27 full-time study this is £21,805 per year) and full tuition fees.