UCL Department of German / Centre for European Studies
2 PhD Studentships available on the following project:

Reverberations of War: Communities of Experience and Identification in Germany and Europe since 1945
Principal Investigator: Mary Fulbrook
Co-Investigator: Stephanie Bird
Research Fellow: Julia Wagner

Two PhD Studentships are available within the context of an inter-disciplinary AHRC-funded project on
Reverberations of the Second World War in Germany and Europe. Dissertations will be supervised by Mary Fulbrook (history) or Stephanie Bird (culture/literature/film).

This project analyses reverberations of the Second World War across Europe through the Cold War and beyond, shedding new light on the complex legacies of war for generations of Europeans, and, through coordinated in-depth studies, developing a new theoretical approach. It is supported by a 44-month grant from the AHRC of £729,928.00 plus two PhD studentships over three years (providing fees and maintenance for UK students or fees only for EU students who do not fulfil the UK residence requirements).

The project challenges approaches couched in terms of ‘collective memory’ and seeks to develop new theoretical perspectives in terms of communities of identification. It focuses on a selection of inter-related themes which intrinsically connect a later present to a difficult past: reckoning, reconciliation, reconstruction and representation. Each implies – despite the linguistic connotations of ‘return’ – an attempt to build anew under changed circumstances. Such attempts are coloured by later social, political, and also emotional and cultural contexts, in which imaginative engagements in film and literature play a powerful role in shaping aspirations and perceptions; hence the involvement of literary scholars as well as historians in a collaborative, inter-disciplinary team.

The project takes a broad European focus, going beyond the writing of parallel national histories by looking at the experience of war-related violence as a phenomenon transcending the (changing) borders of European states. By looking at long-term legacies through a transnational and comparative lens, it develops a deeper understanding of national discourses and specificities as well as discerning the European dimensions and relatedness of the various experiences and discourses. While German aggression in World War Two is the point of departure, the project does not look at Germany or any other country as an isolated case but in a constantly changing, wider framework. By focusing both on the transmission processes and the active patterns of ‘making sense’ of the legacies of the past in different later circumstances, the project highlights both culturally shaped agency as well as changing political and structural contexts.

The research seeks to bring a genuinely multi-disciplinary approach to this complex, highly sensitive area, ranging from insights and provocations in the cultural arena, through familial and social reverberations, to political instrumentalisation and intellectual controversy in public spheres. The collaborative approach promises to develop fruitful new insights into areas which, although already extensively treated separately, have not as yet been conceived and reconsidered in this integrated way.

Applicants should have an outstanding academic track record and excellent command of German and any other relevant foreign language, according to topic.

General information on the project is available at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/german/aboutus/staff/fulbrookres.htm
For informal enquiries, please contact: m.fulbrook@ucl.ac.uk or stephanie.bird@ucl.ac.uk
For further details, please go to: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/jobs/

Candidates will need to submit a normal UCL programme application with all the usual requirements, full details of which are available at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students/graduate-study
You will need to state on the form that you wish to be considered for the studentships, in the section on funding. Please note that UCL and AHRC eligibility criteria will apply.
Closing date for applications: 1st March 2010.