University of Oxford and the Imperial War Museum, London, October 01, 2015
Application deadline: Apr 10, 2015

Contemporary Art and Conflict at IWM

AHRC Doctoral Studentship in collaboration with Imperial War Museums
(IWM) and the University of Oxford

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded doctorate at the University
of Oxford: "Contemporary Art and Conflict at IWM". This is offered under
the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership programme. The partner
institutions are the University of Oxford and IWM.

The studentship will be supervised by Professor Anthony Gardner and Mr
Paul Bonaventura of the University of Oxford and Sara Bevan of the IWM.
This full-time studentship, which is funded for three years at standard
AHRC rates, will begin on 1 October 2015. The student will be affiliated
with The Queen's College, Oxford.

The Studentship

Building on its internationally-renowned collection of 20th-century
Modern British art, IWM has been commissioning, collecting and
exhibiting contemporary art since the early 1970s. However, contemporary
art has recently become a more prominent focus within our exhibition
programme and collecting ambitions. In 2013 IWM staged Catalyst, a
significant exhibition showcasing the contemporary collection at IWM
North, and launched IWM Contemporary in London, a programme of
exhibitions and events by leading artists and photographers whose work
is a response to war and conflict. Given this reinvigorated focus, we
hope that this Collaborative Doctoral Partnership will contextualise
IWM's programme within a broader field of contemporary art, with the aim
of informing the Museum's long-term thinking for the IWM Contemporary
programming strand.

Through library and primary research the CDP will also enrich
contemporary art's understanding of its own practice, examining its
engagement with contemporary geopolitics as represented by war and
conflict. In particular, the CDP will locate the IWM's curatorial
practice within global discourses of 'contemporaneity' - and around the
significance of dialogue and conflict within any approach to
contemporary art - while profiling artists whose works epitomise the
shifting presentation and understanding of geopolitical conflict. Three
key questions inform this approach: Firstly, how have artistic responses
to conflict since the late 1970s informed the discursive and practical
turn from postmodernism to the contemporary? Secondly, if the politics
of contemporary art and curating are driven by dialogue, affinity and
collaboration, how then do they respond to the very different politics
of conflict? Finally, does the 'contemporaneity' of contemporary art map
onto or differ from that of contemporary military conflict; how might we
understand anew the category of the contemporary in art and in war?

The successful student will be part of the vibrant research community of
contemporary artists, curators and art historians at the Ruskin School
of Art at the University of Oxford, which will a unique contemporary art
environment in which to undertake doctoral research. The successful
student will also be expected to spend time working with the team at IWM
London and will gain practical experience through the realisation of
projects within the IWM Contemporary programme or a major exhibition
planned for 2017.

The award pays fees up to the value of the full time home/EU rate for
doctoral degrees as well as maintenance (the latter is available to UK
citizens and residents only. For more information please visit:
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Student-Funding-Guide.pdf)
. In addition, the student is eligible to receive up to £1,000 a year
from IWM and a similar amount from Oxford University towards research
expenses.

How to Apply

Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree in art history, fine
art, or another relevant discipline, and will need to satisfy AHRC
eligibility requirements including Masters-level advanced research
training or equivalent.

Applicants should submit the following information via email to Sara
McCallum, Research Officer, IWM (research@iwm.org.uk) no later than 5pm
on Friday 10 April:

- A research proposal of 1,000 words in length;
- Curriculum vitae (no more than 2 pages);
- A sample of recent written work (of between 4,000 and 6,000 words)
that is either a full essay or a clearly defined extract of longer work
prefaced by a note putting the work into context;
- Official transcripts detailing university-level qualifications and
marks to date; and
- A brief letter outlining their qualification for the studentship, and
the names and contact details of three academic referees.

All documents should be submitted in either MS Word or PDF format.
Please ensure the subject line of your email appears as 'surname, first
name – IWM/University of Oxford studentship.'

Interviews are scheduled to be held in London on W/C 27 April 2015.
Shortlisted candidates will be asked to complete an application for a
place on the DPhil in Fine Art at the University of Oxford. For further
information please contact Sara McCallum (SMcCallum@iwm.org.uk | 020
7416 5461).