Decolonial Raised Fists: Researching the Raised Fist symbol in anti-colonial and anti-racist posters in People’s History Museum’s political poster collection - PhD opportunity

This fully funded collaborative PhD, between Manchester Metropolitan University and People’s History Museum, focuses on the analysis of the use of the iconic Raised Fist symbol in anti-colonial and anti-racist posters in People’s History Museum’s political poster collection. This analysis will be undertaken with the aims of generating new knowledge about the role of political posters and their symbolism within anti-colonial and anti-racist social movements in the UK and of contributing to the fulfilment of two of People’s History Museum’s current organisational objectives: telling inclusive stories of activism and decolonising their collections.

The project will involve identifying, analysing and historically contextualising relevant case studies within the political poster collection as well as using this analysis to add to a recently developed database of the collection and disseminate project findings via such things as blogs, podcasts, and online exhibitions. The project is intended to contribute to initiatives within the UK heritage industry to acknowledge histories of colonialism and racism and to have relevance to contemporary anti-racist uses of the Raised Fist. The project will have a supervisory team from the Department of Art and Performance at Manchester Metropolitan University and People’s History Museum and will involve collection-related training at People’s History Museum.

We encourage applications from post-graduate students with a good honours degree (2:1 and above) and preferably a masters degree from a relevant discipline, such as Museum Studies, Art History, Design History, Visual Culture, Politics, Social Movement Studies, or History. We particularly encourage applicants with an interest in and knowledge of decolonial theory and of histories of racism and anti-racism. We also encourage Black and global majority applicants to apply.

Closing date: Monday 20 February 2023

Expected start date: October 2023

For further information, contact Dr Simon Faulkner: s.faulkner@mmu.ac.uk

To apply or enquire further, use the following link: https://www.mmu.ac.uk/research/research-study/scholarships#ai-78391-3