Knowledge Orders before Modernity - a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme (MASTER'S PLUS)

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 as well as within western cultures. It seeks to challenge a conventional periodization which associates complex knowledge, complex archival mechanisms, and mundane recording with the development of western print culture. The programme funds up to three MA candidates who will progress to a doctorate connected with the programme. Doctoral 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 scholarship covers full tuition fees, provides a stipend at UKRI base level (£20,780 in 2025/26), and up to £10,000 for research and training needs during the PhD. 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).