The School of History at the University of Kent is pleased to offer a Leverhulme-funded PhD scholarship, working alongside Dr Pratik Chakrabarti on An Antique Land; Geology, Philology and the Making of the Indian Subcontinent, 1830-1920.

The scholarships cover fees in full at the Home/EU rate, as well as a maintenance bursary.

The School has established itself as one of the leading History departments within the UK. Recognised for its research excellence and quality teaching.

The project will highlight the unique convergence of cultural and scientific ideas that took place in India. In India, modernity has often existed in close proximity with the pursuit of antiquity. Modern scientific knowledge has often been used to invent and ratify ideas of Indian heritage and tradition. European scholars, Orientalists, naturalists and missionaries from the late eighteenth century, viewed India as a unique site of cultural and natural heritage. India has also evoked imaginations of ‘lost worlds’ or of being the ‘cradle of civilization’ among Europeans as well as Indians.

This project will investigate a significant but less studied instance of this intimacy between science, culture and antiquity in India by analysing how geological researches in India shaped the discovery of lost worlds within the Indian subcontinent and on a global scale. In doing so, this project will identify two processes; how the convergence of science and culture helped in the imagination of an Indian past; and second, the role the subcontinent played in global imaginations of antiquity.

The closing date for applications is 28 February 2013.

For further details of the programme and scholarships (including full terms, eligibility and application information), please visit: http://www.kent.ac.uk/history/o33/postgraduate/funding