The Staff-Led Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) opportunities for the NBC 2025 competition are listed below:

The Northern Echo and the Politics of Place 

Dr Helena Goodwyn, Northumbria University, with the British Library

The establishment of The Northern Echo newspaper,in 1870, disrupts our understanding of the concept of a ‘regional/national’ press in Britain. This project seeks to challenge current understandings of nineteenth-century press history through a detailed examination of The Northern Echo, once termed ‘the best newspaper in Europe’. Partnering with the British Library and through innovative use of their digitized collections of 19th-century British newspapers, the research will critically reframe our understanding of the ‘provincial’ press in the late nineteenth century. The project will be based at Northumbria with two further skills-development opportunities at the British Library and at The Northern Echo itself.

 When applying please include the code “NBC25/GOODWYN”. The closing date for applications is 2 June 2025.

How to Apply

We strongly encourage you to make contact with the named supervisor to discuss the project at an early stage.

You must first complete Northumbria's online postgraduate application form.  On the application form under 'Studentship / Partnership Reference' and 'Who is your sponsor / funding body?' please include the relevant code NBC25 / plus the name of the supervisor of your project.

Your application should discuss your academic and/or professional experience, and describe how this has prepared you to undertake this project. The ‘Research Proposal’ should be based on the advertised project and should set out what your proposed approach to the project will be. If your application is successful and you are invited to interview, the project supervisor may ask for additional material to be submitted (such as, for Creative Practice projects, a sample of creative work). Please contact the project supervisor if you have questions about your application.

Interviews will take place following the close of the application window, and following acceptance, the Studentship will start in October 2025. 

For further details on the project and for deadlines please visit https://northernbridge.ac.uk/applyforastudentship/cda/

 

The following five Staff-Led CDAs successfully recruited, commencing in October 2025:

‘Where do we belong?’ Using innovative methods to explore working-class identities through Sunderland’s past, present, and future

Dr John Clayton, Northumbria University, with Redhills

In a context of uneven post-industrial development, Brexit, stigmatisation and recent unrest, this project explores working-class identities and belonging in Sunderland and the surrounding area. By examining memories of industrial life and emergent identities, connections between emplaced pasts and possible futures will be explored through partnership with Redhills (Durham Miners’ Association) and innovative public-facing methods including oral histories, photography and soundscapes. The project will capture the multi-sensorial character of complex space-times, allow the student to consider belonging as an affective orientation to time and place, and provide nuanced understandings of post-industrial places today and into the future.

Co-Designing Digital Tools for Physical Activity: Enhancing Engagement in Disadvantaged Communities Through Inclusive Design

Dr Daniel Harrison, Northumbria University, with Rise North East

This project, in collaboration with Rise North East, aims to increase physical activity among underrepresented groups in disadvantaged communities in the North East by applying inclusive design principles to sports technologies. Current technologies emphasise performance over inclusivity, failing to meet diverse needs. Our focus will be on inclusivity, broadened participation, and sustained engagement in sports. We will conduct ethnographic research to understand community dynamics and current technology use, then co-design and test digital tools within these communities. Outcomes will include design recommendations and a toolkit to promote equitable access to physical activity and address the digital divide, ensuring long-term impact.

The role of women’s organisations in social dialogue for gender just transitions in global food supply chains

Prof. Katy Jenkins, Northumbria University, with the Ethical Trading Initiative, and Women Working Worldwide

In partnership with Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and Women Working Worldwide (WWW), this research explores the involvement of diverse women’s organisations in collective organising and social dialogue to promote gender just transitions in global food supply chains. Through archival research, stakeholder interviews, oral history interviews and participatory photography with women workers in the tea production and supply chain, the research brings together development studies, labour geographies, and historical geographies, to develop a multi-scalar understanding of the challenges in achieving gender just transitions, and the role of women’s organisations in social dialogue processes aiming to secure workers’ rights and affect change. The successful candidate will be based in Northumbria University's Centre for Global Development. 

The Tudor Organ: Practice-led Research on its Changing Repertoire and Use over Time

Prof. David J. Smith, Northumbria University, with the Royal College of Organists, and Newcastle Cathedral

The studentship involves practice-led research in music performance using an organ reconstructed from a surviving fragment, now owned by the Royal College of Organists (RCO), which will be housed in Newcastle Cathedral during the project. No complete instruments survive from the period, and there remain pressing questions surrounding use of organs in F and their repertoire. They remained in use after the Reformation, so the focus is changing use over time. The project will generate new knowledge for performances at Newcastle Cathedral and dissemination of its results fit into the RCO’s core objective of performance enhanced by scholarship.

The Carl Rosa Opera Company (1873-1960): Provincial Experiences and Performance Practices of a British Touring Opera Troupe

Dr Francesca Vella, Northumbria University, with the Carl Rosa Trust Ltd

This project explores touring opera in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain, using the Carl Rosa Opera Company (1873-1960) as a case study. Drawing on the vast and critically underexamined Carl Rosa Trust collection at Liverpool Central Library, it will produce the first academic study of the longest-running opera troupe to have toured the UK, contextualising its activities in the broader landscape of touring opera, in Britain and beyond. This CDA offers a unique opportunity to combine cutting-edge historical work on cultural regionalism with bid-writing and engagement activities aimed at reshaping public understandings of opera’s use and relevance in UK regions today. 

 

The following four Staff-Led CDAs successfully recruited, and commenced in October 2024:

Interrogating colonialism, climate crisis and mass human migration through decolonial curating‌

Dr Donna Chambers, Northumbria University, with D6: Culture in Transit

Rooted in decolonial curatorial theory and practice, this PhD interrogates the idea of the Anthropocene by critically examining interconnections between colonialism, climate crisis and mass human migration. It will do this through building collaborative relationships with impacted international visual artists. Working with Northumbria and partners, D6: Culture in Transit, a Newcastle-based visual arts organisation with international reach, the candidate will: work with international visual artists to co-produce multi-faceted interpretations of the nexus between colonialism, climate crisis and mass human migration; interrogate and reflect on the extent to which such artistic interventions can contribute to social justice through decolonial curatorial practices. 

Our Calder History: Our Calder Future‌

Dr Leona Skelton, Northumbria University, with Calder and Colne Rivers Trust (CCRT)

Calder and Colne Rivers Trust (CCRT) must urgently balance the environmental and heritage needs of Yorkshire’s heavily modified, post-industrial River Calder. This archival PhD project analyses the Calder’s past management because historic priorities have shaped the development and management of today’s Calder catchment. The research will inform environmental policy by sharing archival evidence of the legacies of historic river management in the present and future with CCRT, Yorkshire Water (YW), the Environment Agency (EA) and local councils. By incorporating this PhD project’s conclusions, CCRT’s new management plans will better accommodate competing needs of heritage, people and environment in the future. 

Creative Play: Learning to Fail through Digital Tinkering‌

Prof. Nic Whitton, Northumbria University, with the International Centre for Life (Life)

Thinking creatively and managing setbacks are crucial for all young people. Playful digital tinkering in family groups can help develop creativity and build resilience by reducing fear of failure. However, play can unintentionally exclude families from disadvantaged backgrounds, and we need more evidence of how to support children to learn from their mistakes. In collaboration with the International Centre for Life, a science visitor centre in Newcastle, the research will explore how to maximise inclusivity in playful design, how best to facilitate learning through failure, and provide evidence of the impacts of this approach on fear of failure and creativity. 

Wholesaler of the North: TheBewick-Beilby Enterprise and Newcastle Print History‌

Dr Helen Williams, Northumbria Univesity, with Tyne & Wear Archives

Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) is widely recognised as a producer of fine prints who pioneered new techniques of wood engraving. But the shop that he co-ran with Ralph Beilby (1744–1817) was also a major intervention in the commercial history of Newcastle, helping to service a city which became a premier print centre outside of the metropolis. The Bewick-Beilby archive is held at Tyne & Wear Archives, where a collection of papers remains unlisted in the archive catalogue. This project will make accessible this underused resource to future scholarship while producing new knowledge on eighteenth-century Newcastle as the printing centre of the North.