PhD Studentships available at University of Brighton

Doctoral Studentships at the University of Brighton

The University of Brighton currently has a number of funded studentships available, both through the AHRC's TECHNE scheme and the university's own studentship scheme.

Potential PhD applications are invited to submit applications on the theme of:

Affective cartographies of authority

How is authority produced through the generation of affective states? What emergent forms and figures of authority are coming into play in political, cultural and economic life? How can we best understand the lure, or promise, of such forms and figures? We welcome expressions of interest from students who wish to engage with cultural, geographical and political theory and develop methodological approaches for thinking about the politics, aesthetics and ethics of affect, for making sense of the affective landscapes of power through which authority takes place.

A spatial politics involving claims to place, identity, landscape or nation can be played out through affective attachments, fears or alienations. The love of nation, for example, may involve spatialised performances of attachment that serve to anchor the subject within the idea of nationhood. This studentship seeks applications from those who are interested in producing doctoral work on the politics of such affective attachments, detachments and aversions, paying attention to the forms of authority that they generate.

Topics could include: ...

 •        The authority of the market: cartographies of sovereignty, utility, debt, welfare reform, growth and degrowth
•        Affective landscapes of authority: spaces of commemoration and remembrance, landscapes of national and transnational attachment, military landscapes, spatialities of security, risk and fear
•        The “lure” or “grip” of particular ideas and figures in the public sphere
•        Material attachments (for example to soil, coal, air, trees) as a means of authority-production
•        The technological production of affective capacities and desires, and the changing technics of authority
•        The generation of authority among social movements and activist groups
•        Figures, spaces or architectures of authority
•        Performance, process and practices of authority production

For further information, please visit http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/doctoral-centre-arts/studentships. For specific information on TECHNE studentships, please visit http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/doctoral-centre-arts/studentships/techne-ahrc-studentships.http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/doctoral-centre-arts/studentships/techne-ahrc-studentships. For informal enquiries and advice on applying, please contact l.dawney@brighton.ac.uk. The final deadline is 17 January 2015, but please get in touch in plenty of time to allow for proposal development.