PHD COLLABORATION

Kew hosts more than 130 PhD students through diverse co-supervision arrangements, ranging from students based overseas who come for a short-term placement, to those permanently on-site at Kew. Most PhD students are funded through national or international schemes, including (for arts and humanities) Doctoral Training Partnerships such as TECHNE CHASE and LAHP, and the Science Museums and Archives (SMAC) Collaborative Doctoral Training Partnership. Some universities also offer their own PhD scholarships. Funding deadlines can be up to a year before a potential starting date, so potential university-based supervisors and students should contact Kew well in advance.

AHRC-funded collaborative awards offer exceptional opportunities for students to gain experience of working with Kew’s collections and public engagement, as well as carrying out research. Current PhD subjects include studies of global commodities in the form of tea and chocolate, critical archives approaches to Kew’s colonial archives, and practice-based PhDs based on artistic and filmic engagements with Kew’s Amazonian and Indigo collections. Previous PhD projects have focused on the history of Kew’s museums, on bark-cloth, paper, and cinchona, on colonial collecting in Guyana and funded by the ESRC, an anthropologist’s view of collecting for the Millennium Seed Bank.

AHRC studentships include provision for funded placements outside the main scope of the PhD thesis. Kew is sometimes able to host such placement students, who usually work on projects that contribute to Kew’s work while developing transferable skills in the student.