Research news

Museum wins doctoral studentship awards

All five applications made by the British Museum and partner universities to win funding for Collaborative Doctoral Studentships have been approved. 

The awards, by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, pay for a student to research a topic chosen by the Museum. Based in their respective universities, the students will spend time working at the Museum and will be jointly supervised by a member of Museum staff.

Nationally, only about half of the applications under this scheme were successful, so to get five out of five is a great success.

The new students will start work in October 2007. The projects range from examining the corrosion of iron artefacts unearthed by archaeologists and the state art of the Chimu people from the Moche vallery of Peru, to Pewter hoards from Roman Britain.

The Museum has had previous success in winning Collaborative Doctoral Studentship awards and there are a number currently underway. They include:

Doctoral Research in Portable Antiquities Scheme data and Roman Britain (with Kings College, London and the Institute of Archaeology at University College London),

A reassessment of late pre-Roman Iron Age society through Iron Age coin finds in Britain (with Birkbeck College, University of London).

The next round of applications will take place in December 2007. Successful projects will begin in October 2008.

The projects in full:

Pewter Hoards from Roman Britain
Museum staff: Richard Hobbs, Department of Prehistory and Europe
Partner: University of Reading

Roman coin loss patterns from the Portable Antiquities Scheme
Museum staff: Sam Moorhead, Portable Antiquities and Treasure
Partner: Institute of Archaeology, University College London

Chimu state art
Museum staff: Colin McEwan, Africa, Oceania and the Americas
Partner: Institute of Archaeology, University College London

The corrosion of archaeological iron
Museum staff: Quanyu Wang, Conservation, Documentation and Science
Partner: University of Cardiff

Byzantine Gold Glass
Museum staff: Chris Entwhistle, Department of Prehistory and Europe
Partner: University of Sussex.