Modern and Contemporary History PhD

Bergin has supervised MA theses in the field of African American literature and culture, Caribbean literature, Welsh cultural memory, white settler colonial imaginaryies  and Holocaust Representation. 

She is has supervised PhD theses to completion in  Memorialisation in the Postmodern-Neoliberal Conjuncture;  Women's literature in Belize: Memory, Identity and the Legacy of slavery; Male Performance Wear and authenticity in Country Music 1947-1992; Models of authentic inner voice as social critique in the post-war novel; The Pink Triangle: The politics of forgetting and remembering the homosexual victims of Nazi persecution and British representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23. She is currently supervising PhDs in folk horror and counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, American Women’s study abroad in Europe, rethinking “blackness” as a racial identity and intergenerational familial storytelling in Northern Ireland. She is interested in supporting research in the following areas: African American writing; enslavement and representation; black radical history; Caribbean Culture and Identity; Marxist literary history; post-colonialism; Irish studies; Holocaust memorialisation; novel studies; transnational solidarities.

Sue is based at the University of Brighton Design Archives and supervises research on archives in theory and practice, particularly in art and design; and on twentieth century British art and design and their contexts, with a particular focus on the mid-century. She supervises Masters and Doctorate projects both at Brighton and elsewhere, and is happy to hear from potential students with interdisciplinary interests that intersect with archives practice or the Design Archives collections.

Christian would be interested in supporting doctoral research in the following areas: Anti-colonialism; Atlantic Studies and maritime history; Black British History; Black Intellectual History; British imperial history; Caribbean history and politics (including Haitian Revolutionary Studies); Labour History; Pan-Africanism; Race, Resistance and Reparative Histories; Slavery, Resistance and Abolition.      

Areas for PhD supervision include:

• Nineteenth-century life writings, particularly within colonial contexts
• Critical and anticolonial perspectives on missionaries, education and Empire
• Colonial and imperial sites of memory
• Eighteenth and nineteenth-century medical practices and colonial medicine
• Cultural, intellectual and religious histories of British eighteenth and nineteenth-century history
• Historiographies of British Empire
• Millenarian prophecy and prophetic groups
• Public histories and pedagogical practices
• Cultural politics of grief and anticipatory grief
• Feminist ecologies and relational ontologies, particularly allied to eco-therapies and pedagogies
• Narrative and critical perspectives on narrative in healthcare
• Critical integrative feminist contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches

I supervise PhDs on a range of modern European history themes, especially on histories and memories of conflict, resistance and refugeedom. I am also interested in innovative projects on the method and challenges of writing the history of today. In our School we have an excellent record in securing funding for applicants that are keen to discuss and shape their ideas in dialogue with us.  

Some of my recent doctoral students are: 

Amadeusz Lange 'In the shadows, unveiling Polish women’s contributions in clandestine activity, 1939-1945' (started 2022)

Rosemary Rich, ‘The memory of Second World War conscientious objection since 1945’ (started 2019)

Vanessa Tautter, ‘Narratives of Victimisation among the Contemporary Right in Austria and Northern Ireland’ (started 2018)

Oscar Louis Norris-Broughton, 'Guilds at Home and Abroad: A History of Knowledge of Guild Socialism' (awarded 2022)

Pete Morgan, ‘British representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23’ (awarded 2022)

Kate Newby, ‘Children’s and Transgenerational Memories of violence in Norther Ireland in the 1970s’ (awarded  2020)

Ian Cantoni, ‘Spanish Republican refugee camps in southern France following the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939’ (awarded 2019)

My supervisory interests include the study of popular media genres (science fiction, horror); the relations between media, memory and trauma; and media and politics (specifically imperialism, (post)colonialism and globalisation. Interdisciplinary projects on media, literature and culture are most welcome.

A more detailed indicative list of supervisory interests includes the following areas:

• the study of popular media genres (science fiction, horror/Gothic, utopia/dystopia, (post-)apocalyptic fiction).
• the relations between screen media, trauma theory and memory studies - with a more recent interest in nostalgia studies.
• the historical and discursive relations between screen media and imperialism, globalisation and (post)colonialism.

Students with an interest in an interdisciplinary approach that extends across English studies and Film and Television studies are most welcome. I have also researched, taught and published on the late Victorian period ('fin de siecle') and postmodern theory, literature and culture.

Dr Ceren Özpınar is currently supervising three PhD students at Brighton, and one at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, who work on subjects in transnational storytelling, lesser-known women artists in the 20th century, feminism in the museum, and textile-based artistic practices. 

Ceren would be interested in supervising PhD projects on feminist and queer approaches to art; transnational art histories; narratives of difference; memory and materiality. She would also welcome proposals interested in researching any aspect of the project of decolonising the history of art and exhibitions, particularly but not exclusively, in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African geographies.

Ceren also hosts visiting doctoral researchers on a regular basis. If you are working on a PhD project at another institution related to her research expertise and would like to be supervised by her at Brighton for a short period (up to a year), feel free to contact her.

Annebella supervises PhD projects in visual and material culture, histories of photography and popular image cultures, Mass Observation, modern British art and design, non-elite design and dress history, everyday / vernacular cultural practices and countercultures. She is currently supervising ten doctoral students, including three in funded partnership with museums. She has supervised six PhD students to completion, including a PhD by Publication, and has examined over 20 PhD theses, including practice-led doctorates, nationwide.

• Histories and cultures of British transatlantic slavery and resistance
• Histories, cultures and representations of 18C and 19C abolitionism
• Transatlantic slavery and the archive
• Capitalism and Slavery
• Caribbean, Diasporic and Black Atlantic Literatures
• Postcolonial Theory, Identity and Culture
• Cultural Memories of Empire, Colonialism and Transatlantic Slavery

Rebecca supervises students researching contemporary British History. She has particular expertise in the history of housing, the politics of twentieth and twenty first century Britain, the history of sexuality and gender, and the impact of war on society. She works with students across social, political, cultural and economic history and with students specialising in politics, sociology or philosophy who want to incorporate historical analysis into their research. 

Aakanksha is happy to supervise postgraduate work on late Victorian and modern literature. She has specific interests in literary modernism and would particularly welcome projects exploring literature and the arts (music and visual culture).

Specific areas within literary studies (1850-1950) might include

• Victorian/modern transitions
• philosophy, aesthetics and politics in modern literature
• poetry and poetics
• literature, music and visual culture
• aestheticism, decadence and desire

Julia Winckler's interdisciplinary research focuses on working with visual archives and collections. Memory and migration narratives, contested topographies, exile studies, co-production of knowledge and photography & activism are particular areas of interest. 

For PhD applicants:

Winckler currently co-supervises five Phd students at the University of Brighton and one Phd student at the University of Salzburg. Two of these Phd projects are practice-based; one is Techne funded, a second is an AHRC CPD  studentship. 

Winckler welcomes Phd inquiries that interact with any of the following: 

Working with Archives and Collections: Photographic archives, Community archives, Museums, Private Collections

Memory Studies: Postmemory, transnational memory, cultural memory, communicative memory, personal memory

Art practice as research: visual, creative and ethnographic research methods/photo voice/photo elicitation/digital media technologies, site-specific interventions

Co-production of knowledge: popular education methodology, participatory methods, oral history, histoire croisée/regards croisés methodologies

Photography and activism: community art practice (global, historical & contemporary) and critical pedagogy

Photographers in Exile in Britain: contributions made by emigrés to the field of Applied Arts

Dr Wintle welcomes enquiries about projects on museums, exhibition design, collecting, cultural forms of imperialism, nationalism and decolonisation, especially in Britain, and the material and visual culture of South Asia.

Claire has supervised three PhDs to completion and currently supervises eight AHRC-funded PhD students. She has examined postgraduate theses at SOAS, Leicester University, Royal Holloway, Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Southampton and a further five PhDs at the University of Brighton. Her students focus on themes ranging from British South Asian community engagement with museums to the professional experiences of museum staff working to decolonise practice. She works with colleagues at the British Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Horniman Museum and the V&A to supervise Collaborative Doctoral Projects on subjects including the British Museum's relationships with museums in West Africa, South Asian donors to the British Museum, exhibition design at the British Museum and Korean collections at the V&A. She also works with colleagues at Shiv Nagar University in India to supervise a PhD project on Bihar Museum.