Swansea University Landscape History and Archaeology: Fees Only PhD Studentship

The College of Arts and Humanities (CoAH), Swansea University, invites applicants for a fees-only PhD studentship in Landscape History and Archaeology.

The successful candidate will be charged with developing a range of innovative digital methods for mapping the historic and cultural character of place. These methods will be tested through a number of period specific case studies designed to address research questions relating to the development of the South Wales landscape from the early medieval period onwards. It is expected that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) will play a key role in this project, serving as the primary means by which methods are developed and data is managed, manipulated, visualised and interpreted.

Perceptions of the historic and cultural landscape are fundamental to how societies relate to and interact with their environment. This PhD would seek to develop an approach that would be of value to regional processes of planning and economic development in both the private and public sector. Innovative approaches to landscape characterisation would meet with the first aim of the Council of Europe’s European Landscape Convention; ‘to encourage States to introduce a national landscape policy that is not restricted to the protection of exceptional landscapes but also takes everyday landscapes into consideration’. It would also facilitate the identification of both the significance and distinctiveness of historic landscapes; stated aims of Historic England’s Action Plan for 2015 – 2018 (2.2) and CADW’s current Welsh Historic Environment Action Plan (1.2 and 2.1).