Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Landscape History (University of Exeter)

RHN 126/2020 | Opportunity

College of Humanities, University of Exeter

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project entitled “A landscape transformed: the reclamation of Exmoor Forest”, conducted in association with University of Plymouth

Closing date for applications: 14 October 2020

 

Job title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Job reference: P73693
Application closing date: 14/10/2020
Location: Exeter
Salary: The starting salary will be from £35,845 on Grade F depending on qualifications and experience.
Package: Generous holiday allowances, flexible working, pension scheme and relocation package (if applicable).
Job category/type: Research

Job description:

College of Humanities

This Leverhulme Trust funded post is available from 1st November 2020 to 31stOctober 2022.

The post
The College wishes to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History/Landscape History to participate in a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project entitled “A landscape transformed: the reclamation of Exmoor Forest”, conducted in association with University of Plymouth.

Summary of the role
The project focuses on attempts by the Knight family to reclaim and ‘improve’ 20,000 acres of the former Royal Forest of Exmoor, in the three decades after they purchased it from the Crown Commissioners in 1818. The Knight family were a dynasty of iron founders from the Midlands, who embarked on the largest single land reclamation scheme in southern England, on a scale comparable to canal-building or the construction of the railways – albeit with limited success.

The project will shed new light on this dramatic and fundamental transformation of the Royal Forest, and this post will focus on making use of a previously unknown Knight family/estate archive at Somerset Heritage Centre, to place the transformation within its historical context. The larger project combines historical investigations into the origins (why and where did the major landscape designs emerge from), and process (how the upland landscape was transformed) of these changes, with an innovative in-depth palaeo-ecological investigation (how did the landscapes and ecological systems respond to the change), based at Plymouth. The historical part of the project will be managed by Prof. Henry French at University of Exeter, working closely with the project leader, Prof. Ralph Fyfe at University of Plymouth.

The successful applicant will investigate the newly-deposited Knight Archive at Somerset Heritage Centre (Taunton) and related UK archives, to establish the chronology/geography of ‘improvement’ activities on Exmoor, 1818-60, the logistics/labour requirements behind such activity, the motives or intentions of John Knight, and the potential influence of contemporary improvement literature, landscape designs, agrarian technology or personal contacts. This archival research will be crucial in guiding the selection of palaeo-ecological study sites on Exmoor, and in helping interpret analyses of the ecological record.

The post will include archival research on Knight family estate rentals, accounts, surveys and correspondence; review of contemporary newspaper and agrarian journals/‘improvement’ literature for descriptions of activities on Exmoor, and initiatives applied on Exmoor by John Knight; potentially surveys of smaller deposits of family materials in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Nottinghamshire and Gwynedd archives; potentially interpretation of landscape features on historic mapping and contemporary LiDAR/aerial photography.

Please ensure you read the Job Description and Person Specification for full details of this role by clicking on the pdf attachment here.

About you

You will:

  • possess a relevant PhD or equivalent qualification/experience in a related field of study
  • be able to develop research objectives, projects and proposals; and make presentations at conferences and other events
  • have research experience in nineteenth-century British social, or economic, or agrarian, or landscape history (including history of landed estate management, or the interpretation of historic landscapes)
  • possess sufficient specialist knowledge in the discipline to develop research programmes and methodologies
  • be able to work collaboratively
  • be able to read and interpret nineteenth-century manuscript sources relating to estate management, agrarian history, landscape history, and familial correspondence; interpret contemporary printed sources, particularly newspapers, and agrarian journals; (potentially) interpret historic landscape features on historic/contemporary aerial photographs & LiDAR images                                                    

Benefits

We offer some fantastic benefits including:

Further information

Please contact Professor Henry French, H.French@exeter.ac.uk or (01392) 494160. 

 

To view job details or apply on-line visit the University of Exeter’s job portal.

 

Source: https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/