Irish Research Council Laureate Award PhD scholarships

PhD project 1: First edition, translation, and commentary of the Computus Einsidlensis,
the earliest textbook on the reckoning of time in medieval Europe.

This text was discovered in early 2006 in the Benedictine monastery of Einsiedeln in the Swiss Alps. It is preserved in the codex 321 (647), pp. 82–125 of said monastery. Though this manuscript has been frequently studied by experts on Bedan and Carolingian computistics (Jones 1939, Borst 2001, 2006, and others), the text in question escaped their attention. The Irish authorship is beyond doubt, not least because of the frequent use of Old Irish in the otherwise Latin text. Comparison with the datable Munich Computus (AD 718/9) not only confirmed Irish authorship, it also proved that the Computus Einsidlensis must be the older text, to be dated c.AD 700. This text is one of the central documents of the ‘Irish Golden Age’.

Requirements and research skills:

Essential:

• Master’s degree / diploma (awarded or pending) or international equivalent (German Staatsexamen, etc.) in a relevant academic area (relevant areas include but are not limited to: Classics, Medieval Studies, History, History of Science, Manuscript Studies)
• Evidence of solid knowledge in Latin

Desirable:

• Reading knowledge of German and / or French
• Knowledge of Medieval Latin palaeography
• Evidence of engagement with scientific concepts (especially basic mathematical skills)

PhD project 2: First translation and commentary of Dicuil’s Liber de astronomia,
one of the most original and sophisticated scientific texts of the Carolingian Renaissance.

Dicuil received his education in the regions inhabited by the Irish (to use Bede’s phrase), and then worked in the Carolingian Empire under the late Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. The writings ascribed to him show his expertise in grammar, rhetoric, geography, and computus. Of these only the geographical and computistical works have survived. Modern scholars found it easier to engage with Dicuil’s De mensura orbis than with his substantially more complex Liber de astronomia. De mensura is, for its most part, a collection of received knowledge, and Dicuil has therefore been discredited, in generalised terms, as an unoriginal compiler. The Liber de astronomia was introduced into modern scholarship by Esposito’s pioneering transcription of 1907. Since then, it has gone largely unnoticed. Only two publications, by Cordoliani 1960 and Bergmann 2011, attempted to engage with the scientific details of this work. Bergmann demonstrated the unparalleled originality of Dicuil’s work by focussing on his ingenious method for calculating Easter. This is just the tip of the iceberg, Dicuil’s text bristles with innovation and originality, and is one of the most important documents of the Carolingian Renaissance.

Requirements and research skills:

Essential:

• Master’s degree / diploma (awarded or pending) or international equivalent (German Staatsexamen, etc.) in a relevant academic area (relevant areas include but are not limited to: Classics, Medieval Studies, History, History of Science, Manuscript Studies)
• Evidence of advanced knowledge in Latin

Desirable:

• Reading knowledge of German and / or French
• Knowledge of Medieval Latin palaeography
• Evidence of engagement with scientific concepts (especially basic mathematical skills)

PhD project 3: The spread of Irish calendrical thought in Carolingian Europe - Object Oriented Cataloguing of computistical manuscripts

The principal aim of this project is the development of a digital tool that allows for a comprehensive study of the spread of Irish thought on the Continent and its underlying networks. A typology for classifying calendrical algorithms, concepts, diagrams, and tables (the ‘objects’) scattered in numerous manuscripts will be developed. This will be turned into a new method of digitally tagging the computistical features of the objects (‘Object Oriented Cataloguing’), which will allow, in a ground-breaking and pioneering way, to statistically measure the popularity of any given concept or algorithm, to map the spread of scientific thought, and to discern networks of intellectual centers.

Requirements and research skills:

Essential:

• Master’s degree / diploma (awarded or pending) or international equivalent (German Staatsexamen, etc.) in a relevant academic area (relevant areas include but are not limited to: Digital Humanities, Classics, Medieval Studies, History, History of Science, Manuscript Studies)
• Experience in programming: HTML + CSS + Javascript and / or PHP + MySQL (database)

Desirable:

• Evidence of solid knowledge in Latin
• Reading knowledge of German and / or French
• Knowledge of Medieval Latin palaeography
• Evidence of engagement with scientific concepts (especially basic mathematical skills)

Application:

Candidates can apply generically for all three positions, or for one in particular.

Applicants must meet the general requirements for a PhD at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

Candidates have to apply through the TCD system. Applications have to be submitted by following the link for Doctor in Philosophy, History (Full Time) under September 2018 entry here.

The following documents are required (see also these general application guidelines):

• A motivation letter, to be uploaded under ‘research proposal’
• Two letters of recommendation
• Certified academic transcripts for all degrees
• Certified degree certificates for all degrees
• A detailed CV, to be uploaded under ‘additional documents’
• A writing sample (an academic essay, an article, a chapter from a dissertation, or the like), to be uploaded under ‘additional documents’
• For non-native English speakers without a degree from an English-speaking institution, a language test is required (TOEFL or IELTS); the application can be submitted without the test, but any offer made will be conditional until the required test results are submitted

The application may be followed up by a skype interview in mid-June.

For any questions or informal discussions, do not hesitate to contact Dr Immo Warntjes

For much of Chinese history, childhood as a period of education and development when young people should be nurtured and their innocence protected was a category that was applied almost exclusively to elites and boys. Elite girls and poorer boys might access education and some of the other characteristics of childhood, but poor girls were not included. Instead they were treated as small women, often sold in the same way that women could be sold by their families as wives, concubines, or mui tsai/binü, and when they were protected under law or as potential victims of abuse, they were categorised with adult women.
This is the picture that emerges from the current, quite limited, historiography of Chinese childhood, which focuses on the education of elite boys (Saari 1990; Wang 2013) and examines girls only through the prism of women (Kinney 2004, 120-31). CHINACHILD will address how public and official discourse about girls changed between approx. 1919 and 1959 to include the poor and girls in a universal conception of childhood. Dr Jackson’s research as Principal Investigator (PI) will focus on what changing responses to child slavery reveal about conceptions of childhood and girlhood.
The project aims to:

1. Open a new field of enquiry in modern Chinese history that explains the expansion of the category of ‘child’ to include girls of all social classes between 1919 and 1959. This will dramatically alter the existing landscape of the field of childhood studies, not just in relation to China but highlighting the need for gender to be central to examinations of childhood in all contexts. It will also have ramifications for women’s and gender history and the study of women and gender in contemporary China.
2. Redraw the line between gender and childhood, showing how women and girls developed into separate categories in Chinese society and challenging scholars to take better account of this in their research.

The PhD student will undertake research that contributes to one or both of these aims. It is anticipated that the student will undertake oral history research examining memories of childhood experiences and attitudes towards childhood, but alternative proposals that address the aims of the project are welcome.

Scholarship:

€16,000 annual stipend + €5,750 towards fees p.a. for four years.

Academic requirements:

• Excellent English and Chinese language skills.
• Preference will be given to an applicant who has completed or is completing a Master’s degree in History with a good grade, especially if they have training in oral history methodologies.
• Applicants must also meet the general requirements for a PhD at Trinity College Dublin, including a good undergraduate degree in History or a closely related subject.

How to apply:

Applicants should contact Dr Isabella Jackson prior to applying. Applications should then be submitted by following the link for Doctor in Philosophy, History (Full Time) under September 2018 entry here.

The following documents are required:

• Two academic references
• A research proposal showing how a student’s research plans meet the project aims (proposal guidelines)
• Certified academic transcripts for all degrees
• Certified degree certificates for all degrees
• A writing sample (e.g. an academic essay, article, or dissertation chapter)
• For non-native English speakers without a degree from an English-speaking institution, a language qualification is required; the application can be submitted without the certificate, but any offer made will be conditional until the required test results are received

The CLICAB project will examine to two central hypotheses: (1) That climatic changes, including drought, flooding and other extreme weather, are linked to patterns of violence and conflict in the Ancient Near East, with climate thus playing a key but presently little-considered role in the story of this major region and era of world history, marked by violent conflict, but also material and cultural achievement. (2) That any “climate-conflict linkages” will vary meaningfully through time according to the evolving socioeconomic, political and cultural background in which climatic changes and extreme weather occurred. The project will focus upon the Fertile Crescent kingdom of Babylonia (south-central Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq) during the first millennium BCE. Textual scholars, linguists and archaeologists of the period have generated a wealth of data that now allows the application of new expertise from environmental historians (including climate historians or historical climatologists).

To test the project’s hypotheses, the project aims to:

• Develop a new climatic reconstruction for Babylonia for the first millennium BCE using approaches that integrate the region’s rich written and natural archives.
• Establish if climatic changes are statistically associated with violence and conflict.
• Identify the “pathways” by which climatic changes may have catalysed violence and conflict, and how Babylonian society attempted to mitigate such violence and conflict.
• Examine how the changing historical context mediates any role for climate in violence and conflict through this long period.

Success will advance our understanding of climate’s role in this formative period of history, in the context of a pressing need to understand such a role in present conflicts. It will also facilitate the application of the methodologies developed here to the multiple millennia of documented history in the wider ancient and medieval worlds of Eurasia

The PhD student can undertake research that contributes to one or several of these aims, working closely with the project PI, a postdoctoral researcher and external collaborators in the field of Babylonian documentary archives and economic history (Professor Bert van der Spek, Free University Amsterdam), Near Eastern palaeoclimatic archives (Professor Dominic Fleitmann, University of Reading) and environmental modelling (Dr Matthew Toohey, GEOMAR).

Scholarship:

€16,000 annual stipend + €5,750 towards fees p.a. for four years.

Academic requirements:

• Excellent English skills.
• Preference will be given to an applicant who has completed or is completing a Master’s degree in History, Historical Geography or Archaeology with a focus on the Ancient Near East and/or Environmental History (and Climate History or Historical Climatology as a subset of these).
• Applicants must also meet the general requirements for a PhD at Trinity College Dublin, including a good undergraduate degree in History or a closely related subject.

How to apply:

Applicants should contact Dr Francis Ludlow prior to applying. Applications should then be submitted by following the link for Doctor in Philosophy, History (Full Time) under September 2018 entry here.

The following documents are required:

• Two academic references
• A research proposal showing how a student’s research plans meet the project aims (proposal guidelines)
• Certified academic transcripts for all degrees
• Certified degree certificates for all degrees
• A writing sample (e.g. an academic essay, article, or dissertation chapter)
• For non-native English speakers without a degree from an English-speaking institution, a language qualification is required; the application can be submitted without the certificate, but any offer made will be conditional until the required test results are received