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Bloomsbury Colleges Studentship: Pandemic Afterlives: Creative Intervention and Cultural Preparedness

Background

Project title: Pandemic Afterlives: Creative Intervention and Cultural Preparedness

Birkbeck’s School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication invites applications for a full-time Bloomsbury PhD Studentship in partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

  • Project details

    The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK has been met with charges of state neglect that affected vulnerable communities most sharply, including the elderly, the disabled, young people, migrant and minoritised ethnic communities (ONS 2021). These claims overshadow an analysis of how socially-engaged arts (e.g. Artfelt Anywhere, Sheffield; Coxside Cartographies, Plymouth; Entelechy Arts, London; Good News from the Future, Cardiff; Talawa Theatre, London) intervened in specific communities (Brady et. Al. 2021; Walsh 2024), and how this work might inform future responses, complementing and extending the WHO’s Pandemic Agreement on ‘pandemic preparedness’ (2025). This PhD project responds to this gap in understanding by asking: 1) how did socially-engaged arts (including performance, digital and visual arts) respond to the Covid-19 pandemic in communities through initiatives led by care, commemoration and resilience?; and 2) how might an understanding of these interventions inform future responses?

    Aims

    • Examine how socially-engaged arts supported UK communities in care, commemoration and resilience during the pandemic.
    • Evaluate how the impact of socially-engaged arts during the pandemic might inform future responses.

    Objectives

    • Develop an interdisciplinary approach to researching the impact of socially-engaged arts on select UK communities during the pandemic, drawing on approaches from creative arts and medical anthropology.
    • Provide a historical overview of socially-engaged arts during the period (c. 2019-2024) and its key strategies, limits and ethical considerations.
    • Examine select case studies in terms of creative representation and intervention
    • Develop an ‘archive of the future,’ formed of a critical and/or creative response (a performance, digital or visual artwork, or a multi-disciplinary artwork, facilitated by Birkbeck Creative Practice Lab) to expand the notion of ‘pandemic preparedness’ (WHO, 2025) from disease control to cultivating cultural care.

    Methodology

    The project should adopt an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on methods in creative arts and medical anthropology. It should deepen the relationship between both disciplinary fields by forging new methodological approaches that respond to the unique social, cultural, medical and temporal conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    • The creative arts component might focus on a combination of practice research, cultural history, documentation, audience engagement, contextual and critical analysis, drawing on materials that include performance recordings, digital artworks, visual artefacts, text, reviews and reports.
    • The anthropological component might draw on complementary qualitative research methods to examine how artists and communities responded to inadequacies in state support, by developing collective and ritualised forms of creative care, commemoration, resilience and preparedness. This might include sampled qualitative data (semi-structured interviews, observation notes, online discussion fora) and appropriate methods of analysis (e.g. thematic analysis, phenomenological approaches).

    Ethical considerations

    Sensitive issues including health, welfare, consent and confidentiality, affecting participants and the researcher, will be central to the ethical considerations of the project. The study will follow Birkbeck's Ethics Policy and Approval Procedures and align with equivalent policies at LSHTM.

    Significance

    The PhD responds to a lack of knowledge in how socially-engaged arts responded to the Covid-19 pandemic, generating new knowledge valuable to academic researchers, cultural organisations and funding bodies. In developing timely, rigorous and innovative research on the arts, health, wellbeing and community, the project prepares the candidate for work in a variety of contexts, including academia and the creative industries. As the first PhD collaboration between arts at Birkbeck and medical anthropology at LSHTM, it forges new interdisciplinary approaches that will enhance both fields and strengthen institutional links.

    Outcomes

    An in-depth investigation into the role of socially-engaged arts in supporting communities in care, commemoration, resilience and preparedness during and following the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.

    Plans for dissemination

    Within Birkbeck, the candidate will share their research in the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication’s doctoral seminar, annual graduate conference, annual Arts Week and research centres (e.g. Birkbeck Creative Practice Lab; Centre for Medical and Health Humanities). At LSHTM, they will present their work at graduate seminars. They will be encouraged to present at subject conferences including Theatre and Performance Research Association, the International Federation for Theatre Research, International Conference on Medical Humanities and Medical Anthropology Europe. The supervisors will guide the candidate in publishing any initial findings in high quality peer-reviewed journals and/or in presenting creative practice work within Birkbeck’s Creative Practice Lab or exhibition spaces at LSHTM.

  • Value and length of funding

    The project is funded for three years and applicants should indicate how each year (and months within) will be spent in their proposal (e.g. periods of research, writing, making).

    The scholarship will cover tuition fees at the UKRI stipend rate (£22,780 per year for 2025-26) and the home fee rate (£5,006 in 2025-26).

  • Supervision

    Principal Supervisor: Professor Fintan Walsh, Birkbeck, University of London,

    Co-Supervisor: Professor Simon Cohn, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

  • Key references

  • How to apply

    Applicants should submit a detailed PhD proposal as Word doc or PDF to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Team, following Birkbeck’s English and Humanities MPhil/PhD guidelines. The project should reflect the applicant’s response to the funded project’s brief and scope.

  • Closing date for applications

    6pm, Friday 27th February 2026