Southampton student awarded prestigious doctoral research studentship

Congratulations to Khaleda Brophy-Harmer, MA History, who has been awarded a highly competitive ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (SCDTP) Research Studentship for her doctoral research project, 'Representing togetherness, racial discourse and the emotions of racial identity through Mass Observation's Covid-19 Collections'. The aim of the study is to interrogate national feelings of solidarity and togetherness during the 2020 pandemic through critical focus on the impact of racial discourses upon these sensibilities.

Khaleda's research will interrogate the composition and significance of 'white' racialised identities during the pandemic, and will utilize discussions of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement to further examine racial discourse during the summer of 2020. In analysing questions of 'national history' in relation to the BLM protests (centring around the figure of Edward Colston), the study will establish how the imagined past is mobilised to define 'self' and 'other,' and its wider societal implications.

The PhD project will be based in the Faculty of Geography and Environmental Science. It is an interdisciplinary study, and the supervisory team spans Geography (Dr Nick Clarke) and History (Dr Eve Colpus).