AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award
Promoting Player’s: Smoking, Advertising and Consumer Culture 1960-1980
Applications are invited from suitably qualified graduates for a fully funded AHRC
Collaborative Doctoral Award to be jointly supervised by Professor Elizabeth Harvey and
Dr Nick Thomas, School of History, and Maria Erskine, Keeper of Community History,
Nottingham City Museums and Galleries.
The award holder will produce a doctoral study drawing on the resources of the John
Player’s Advertising Archive, held by Nottingham City Museums and Galleries. It will
build on the Knowledge Transfer Partnership launched in September 2009 to develop the
Advertising Archive and make it accessible for research.
About the Project
The 1960s and 1970s were an era when the medical establishment’s increasingly forceful
messages on the damaging effects of smoking elicited limited and hesitant, though
gradually increasing intervention by
successive UK governments to restrict the
advertising and promotion of tobacco, coupled with voluntary agreements on the images
used in advertising and the printing of health warnings on cigarette packets. Tobacco
companies responded and adapted to a public climate that increasingly linked smoking
with health issues with marketing innovations that included a wide range of new, mostly
filtered brands, the launch of new coupon schemes lasting until the late 1970s, and a
vigorous promotion of brands through sports sponsorship and the patronage of arts and
entertainment. Player’s took a major part in these developments, both in lobbying
against proposals to limit cigarette advertising and promotion, and by setting the pace in
sports and entertainment sponsorship. The project will use the case of Player’s to shed
new light on how cigarette promotion in the key decades of the 1960s and 1970s sought
to embed a ‘culture of smoking’ locally and nationally and in different spheres of
everyday life, consumer culture, leisure and entertainment. The main sources for the
project will comprise business files, advertising and promotional materials, photographs
and film held in the John Player’s Advertising Archive held by NCMG, together with the
Player’s collection in Nottinghamshire Archives and other unpublished records held in
Liverpool and Bristol. Other sources include tobacco trade journals, Player’s in-house
magazines and newspapers (Navy Cuttings, Player’s Post) and the local and national
press. The project will draw on interviews already carried out with former employees
and the award holder will in addition conduct new interviews.
It is anticipated that the successful applicant will spend around 4-5 months at the
Museum of Nottingham Life at Brewhouse Yard over the course of the doctoral study.
They will undertake some cataloguing of materials not yet accessioned in the Advertising
Archive and will receive training and experience in archival practice such as copyright,
cataloguing, collection management and dissemination. They will gain an insight into
the different activities undertaken by NCMG, from preservation, to cataloguing,
digitisation and public engagement. They will also receive training in oral history
methods. They will put this training into practice by working with Museum staff to
disseminate research findings to a wider audience. In addition to producing an 80,000100,000 word academic dissertation, the award holder will be asked to build up an oral
history collection of interviews with former Player’s employees and contribute text to an
exhibition at the University’s Weston Gallery and a publication in cooperation with
Nottinghamshire Archives. Overall, this is a significant opportunity for a suitably qualified
graduate to undertake original research into a fascinating and under-examined aspect of
British social and cultural history, and it should open up employment possibilities in both
archive/special collections work and in academic/historical research.
Amount of Award
The AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award covers UK/EU fee levels plus maintenance. In
2010/11 the maintenance level was £13,590 per annum. Collaborative Doctoral award
holders also receive a further annual payment of £500 from the AHRC. The standard
length of the award is three years of full time study.
The award will commence on 1 October 2011.
Eligibility
Applicants would normally have completed or be about to complete a Masters in History
or in Museum Studies or a related subject (including, but not restricted to, Cultural
Studies, Art History, Media Studies), with an achieved or predicted grade of Merit or
Distinction, and have gained an upper second or first class honours degree in History or
another relevant subject. In addition, applicants will be required to demonstrate
meticulous attention to detail and organisational skills, as well as experience of working
independently. Applicants with experience of working with, or in, archives and/or
museums are particularly welcome.
All applicants must meet the AHRC’s academic criteria and residency requirements.
Please see:
http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Documents/GuidetoStudentFunding.pdf
How to Apply
All applicants must complete a University of Nottingham postgraduate application
form
for
a
PhD
in
History.
The
form
is
available
online
at:
http://pgapps.nottingham.ac.uk/
Applicants must also complete an application form specifically for the CDA award,
downloadable from the School of History website, and submit it to the School Manager,
Dr Alyson Heery: alyson.heery@nottingham.ac.uk.
Application Deadline
The deadline for receipt of applications is Wednesday 29 June 2011. Two academic
references must also be sent by the deadline to alyson.heery@nottingham.ac.uk.
Interviews
Interviews for shortlisted candidates will be held on Tuesday 26 July 2011.
Further Information
Applicants are welcome to make informal enquiries to Professor Elizabeth Harvey at
elizabeth.harvey@nottingham.ac.uk
About the AHRC: www.ahrc.ac.uk
About Nottingham City Museums:
www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=172
About the Player’s Advertising Archive project: www.mubu.org.uk/playerspast
About the University of Nottingham: www.nottingham.ac.uk