Knowledge Orders before Modernity - a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme

The Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme 'Knowledge Orders before Modernity' (KOM) is an innovative collaboration between King's College London and the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) at the University of Kent. The programme explores the capacity of the handwritten word comparatively, after as well as before the advent of the printing press, outside and well as within western cultures. It seeks to challenge a conventional periodization which associates complex knowledge, complex archival mechanisms, and mundane recording with the arrival of print. The programme is entering its final year of recruitment, and expects to appoint up to five scholars. All successful candidates will participate in a shared programme of visits, events, and discussions. Doctoral scholars will be registered at the University of their first supervisor, either at King's College London or the University of Kent. The studentship offers up to 3.5 years (42 months) of funding, dependent on satisfactory progress, and will cover full tuition fees and an annual maintenance grant at UKRI rates. The programme has four themes: Technologies of knowledge (materiality, writing systems, layout, accounts, numerals, diagrams, ciphers); Embodied knowledge (scribal careers, training, personal mobility, professionalization, language, gatekeepers); Systems of knowledge (archiving processes, witness, memory, reading practices, recall, authenticity, compilation); and Chronologies of knowledge (innovation, continuity, engagement with the past, responses to the present, reuse, forgery). Applications are invited for KOM advertised projects or via an open call, where applicants must demonstrate how their project aligns with one or more of KOM's four themes.