University of Exeter 2022 International PhD in Recycling and Reinvention in Reformation England, UK

The National Trust and the University of Exeter are pleased to announce a unique opportunity to secure a fully-funded doctoral studentship to support research on the cultural transformations of Reformation England. This is an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership studentship offered by the REACH consortium of which National Trust is a partner. REACH – Revisiting and enhancing approaches to collections and heritage – is a collaboration of leading Independent Research Organisations in the arts and cultural heritage sectors: Royal Museums Greenwich, National Portrait Gallery, Historic Royal Palaces, British Film Institute and National Trust. Recycling and reinvention in Reformation England is a PhD study co-created by Emma Slocombe (National Trust) and James Clark (Exeter) as part of an established, funded project tracing the preservation, transmission and re-use of medieval church textiles and other religious art forms in the wake of the Tudor reformations. The Project: Past studies of medieval religious artworks have concentrated on patronage, the process of manufacture and the original context and use, while those concerned with the Tudor period have often been confined either to iconoclastic destruction or the Counter-Reformation reaction. This project aims to connect the artworks that survive with the wider material environment and social experience of the mid-Tudor and Elizabethan periods.It seeks to bridge a long-standing gap in knowledge of the dispersal, preservation and domestic reuse of medieval artforms after the closure of hundreds of churches and the extinction of chantries and the subsequent official sanction of traditional rituals of parish worship.