TEXTS, CONTEXTS AND CULTURES
Graduate Research Education Programme

Texts, Contexts, Cultures is a new departure in graduate research and training in Ireland. It offers candidates a multi-disciplinary PhD programme delivered in co-operation between Arts and Humanities research institutes at three of Ireland’s leading institutions –Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork and NUI Galway. The programme investigates the most basic component of Arts and Humanities research – the text as material object. Texts, Contexts, Cultures has therefore been developed around three core areas of research: Imaging Ireland; History of the book; and European Cultural History.

Texts, Contexts, Cultures offers a structured four year research path to the completion of a fourth level degree. It allows candidates to engage with the research knowledge and skills of scholars from three universities. It encourages candidates to develop their research interests, ideas and skills in challenging, supportive interdisciplinary contexts. Their research interests will develop through a series of foundation year modules which will be delivered at participating institutions by online learning media and video conferencing. PhD candidates will have the benefit of wide-ranging guidance from supervisory panels comprised of leading scholars in discrete and related fields. There will be opportunity to share and present research at unique academic events.

Texts, Contexts, Cultures will offer candidates extensive opportunity to develop national and international research networks through a series of seminars and colloquia. Across the network of participating institutions, students will participate in the events and programmes of the Long Room Hub (the international resource for Arts and Humanities research at Trinity College Dublin), The Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies at NUI Galway and at The Graduate School of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences at UCC. Participants will also take advantage of the postgraduate exchange scheme available through the island-wide collaboration, Humanities Serving Irish Society.

Texts, Contexts, Cultures is designed to prepare students for life after graduation. Participants will benefit from a career training scheme that provides thorough preparation in research skills transferable to a wide variety of settings. They will also have access to placements and mentoring systems in a broad range of some of the most exciting contemporary organisations in media, the cultural and creative industries, public administration and academe.

Structure
The Texts, Contexts, Cultures pathway will be attractive to students with doctoral research interests in a wide range of periods, genres and theoretical perspectives in any of the Arts and Humanities disciplines.

In Year One
Candidates will take a two-semester conference course on "European Cultural History: Texts, Contexts and Cultures" taught by Profs. Nicholas Allen, Crawford Gribben, and Brendan Dooley, available to all students via videoconferencing, plus one elective course in their home institution or, by arrangement, in a related institution.

In Years Two to Four
students will pursue their doctoral research with the support of a supervisory panel of up to four members, which can be drawn from members of the participating institutions. In each case the candidate’s director must come from their institution of registration. The remaining members of the panel may come from any of the participating institutions.

After Year Two
Candidates will complete a placement in a knowledge economy environment. Each of these will be organized by the candidate’s registered institution.
Successful students will graduate from the institution of registration with a PhD in their discipline.

Faculty
Texts, Contexts, Cultures has a director in each of the participating institutions.
Professor Brendan Dooley is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University College Cork. He has previously taught at Harvard University, Notre Dame University and Jacobs University in Bremen, and was Chief of Research at the Medici Archive Project in Florence. Publications include Morandi’s Last Prophecy and the End of Renaissance Politics, Princeton, 2002; The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture, Johns Hopkins, 1999; Science and the Marketplace, Lexington Books, 2001; [with Barbara Marti] Giovanni Baldinucci, Quaderno. Guerra, peste e carestia a Firenze, Polistampa, 2001; [with Sabrina Baron] The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, Routledge, 2000; Italy in the Baroque: Selected Readings, Garland, 1995; Science, Politics and Society in Eighteenth-Century Italy. The Giornale de’ letterati d’ Italia and its World, Garland, 1991; [ed. with Intro.] Energy and Culture: Perspectives on the Power to Work, Ashgate, 2006; and articles in Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales; Journal of Modern History; Rivista storica italiana; etc. He is leading the course on “European Cultural History” and has supervisory interests in early modern cultural history, and the histories of knowledge, media, and science. Contact: b.dooley@ucc.ie

Professor Nicholas Allen is Moore Institute Professor at NUI Galway. He is the author of George Russell and the New Ireland (2003) and is editor of That Other Island (2007), with Eve Patten, Gerald Dawe’s The Proper Word (2007) and The Cities of Belfast (2003), with Aaron Kelly. He is completing a study of Irish literature and art from 1922 to 1939. Recent essays have featured in Modernism and Colonialism (2007), eds. Richard Begam and Michael Moses, and Classics and National Cultures (2008), eds. Susan Stephens and Phiroze Vasunia. He leads the “Imaging Ireland” course, and has supervisory interests in the broad range of twentieth century Irish literature, history and art. Professor Allen can be contacted at nicholas.allen@nuigalway.ie

Dr Crawford Gribben is Long Room Hub Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Print Culture in the School of English / School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of a number of studies on early modern religious cultures, including The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550-1682 (Dublin, 2000) and God’s Irishmen: Theological debates in Cromwellian Ireland (Oxford, 2007). He leads the “History of the Book” course, and has supervisory interests in literature, history and religion. Dr Gribben can be contacted at crawford.gribben@tcd.ie.

How to apply
Prospective students MUST apply directly to the institution from which they wish to graduate.
Prospective students of University College Cork should contact Brendan Dooley or Marie O’Donovan (m.odonovan@ucc.ie) for advice on application.
Closing date for UCC applications is 1 June 2010

Brendan Dooley
Professor of Renaissance Studies
College of Arts
Graduate School
University College Cork
Ireland
+353 (21) 420 5139
Email: b.dooley@ucc.ie
Visit the website at http://www.textscontextscultures.ie