New research posts announced by council and university



Issued by City of York Council

New research posts to be jointly funded and supervised by the University of York and City of York Council have been announced.

Three Collaborative Doctoral Awards are being offered to investigate the city’s archaeology and the City Archive and how more community involvement in both can be embraced.

Funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council, two of the PhD awards will be in archaeology and will be co-supervised by Dr John Schofield from the University of York and by John Oxley, City of York Council’s Archaeologist.

The third will be in history and co-supervised by Dr Sarah Rees Jones, Director of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York, and by Richard Taylor, City of York Council’s Archivist.

Using York’s unique resources and sites, the three closely-related projects will together make a critical assessment of contemporary heritage values. They relate to the city’s built environment, its buried archaeological resource and the City Archive in relation to national and international criteria on the one hand, and to community-led views and values on the other.

They will explore the complex relations that exist between heritage and community, and how these can be better aligned to serve contemporary society as heritage becomes more community driven.

Councillor Sonja Crisp, City of York Council’s Cabinet Member for Leisure, Culture and Tourism, said: “This is a great example of how the Heritage Lottery Fund £1.6m grant to support the city archives’ Gateway to History project is increasing our capacity and sustainability at a time of financial restrictions for local government. 

“The AHRC funding to support a PhD researcher at the archives and in the city’s abundant archaeological remains, will give us a legacy that will extend the value of the HLF grant to York and add to the body of research around World Heritage.

“By gathering hard evidence on the value of the city’s archaeology and archives to local people, the researchers will show how it can support our community cohesion, tourism, wellbeing and education agendas as an example to other cities. I’m delighted that these research opportunities will also utilise officer expertise.”

Dr Sarah Rees Jones said: “York’s extraordinary wealth of archaeological and archival material means that these three awards are designed to study ways of encouraging and supporting wider public participation in the city’s heritage, archaeology and archives. 

“They also build on past shared initiatives, such as the world heritage bid, and on the success of the recent Heritage Lottery Fund bid to provide the city archives with a new home in York Explore Library Learning Centre.”

The awards also follow on from collaborative doctoral awards previously shared with the York Archaeological Trust and a collaborative award with the CBA on heritage policy.



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