PhD fellowships beginning in September 2019 for up to four years available in Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork in Ireland, in connection with the EURONEWS research project.

The EURONEWS initiative is about exploring the information connectedness of premodern European society by examining the regular circulation of news in a vast range of pre-newspaper networks. The manuscript newsletters in question are located largely in some 200 file folders in Florence. Researchers responsible for a selection of these will be working closely with the EURONEWS team, the State Archives in Florence, as well as the Medici Archive Project, to implement a systematic extraction method for making sense of the whole mass of documentation and connecting the dots in an expanding pattern of exchanges stretching from Florence to Warsaw, from Paris to Madrid, from the Netherlands to Britain, Ireland and the American colonies. Our ultimate goal, made feasible for the first time by this funding, is to reconstruct the fascinating news environment of an entire lost world, early modern Europe, at the birth of news.

Successful candidates will be responsible for developing their research using the manuscript newsletter documentation present in the Archivio Mediceo del Principato and in the Miscellanea Medicea regarding the period 1537 to 1743. The research, interdisciplinary in scope, will be organized according to geographical regions involving all the main areas of Early Modern Europe and will be subject to five levels of analysis, associated with the categories of REGIONS, POWER, COMMERCE, DIFFUSION AND RHETORIC. A main task will be to create a corpus of newsletter material utilizing the digital platform of the EURONEWS project. In addition they will have the opportunity to attend relevant courses in digital humanities at UCC and in paleography at the Medici Archive Project, to present research at relevant international meetings and publish on their topic. PhD scholarships pay full tuition for EU applicants and partial tuition for non-EU applicants, at University College Cork, in the Digital Arts and Humanities program, along with a yearly stipend of 16,000 EUR per year for four years.

REQUIREMENTS

• postgraduate Master’s degree or first/upper second-class honours degree or equivalent in early modern history or related field that must be held at the time of appointment
• English fluency (as second language: 6.5 IELTS certificate or equivalent)
• good working knowledge of Modern and Early Modern Italian
• ability to read early modern handwriting desirable
• interest in digital humanities and public histor

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

Application should be in English and include:

• full curriculum vitae
• cover letter
• grades achieved in studies toward higher degree
• research proposal within the project parameters (max. 4 page)
• writing sample (e.g. abstract and one chapter from MA thesis, or relevant publication)
• contact details of two referees familiar with the work of the applicants.

Further information:

EURONEWS: http://earlynewsnet.org/EURONEWS.htm

DH at UCC: https://www.ucc.ie/en/dah/study/

Applications must be submitted to Professor Brendan Dooley (b.dooley@ucc.ie) in PDF format by 15 June 2019, 5pm local time. Applications will be reviewed, and applicants will be informed by the end of June, at which time the successful applicants may formally apply for admission to UCC. Preliminary enquiries by email are welcome.