ESRC White Rose DTP Collaborative Award
The ESRC WRDTP Collaborative Awards are PhD studentships set up in collaboration with partners in the private, public or third sectors.
For October 2024 entry, the University of Sheffield is offering an exciting PhD opportunity in collaboration with GATE (Gypsy and Traveller Exchange) in our School of Geography and Planning, lead supervised by Professor Ryan Powell.
PhD Studentship: Gypsies and Travellers and the harms of planning: counter-mapping, oral histories and housing justice
This exciting research opportunity will contribute to the reframing and re-historicizing of the UK’s contemporary “Traveller problem”.
This project is a collaboration between the School of Geography and Planning at the University of Sheffield and Leeds GATE (Gypsy and Traveller Exchange), a community members organisation aimed at improving the quality of life of Gypsies and Travellers in West Yorkshire.
Working with the Gypsy and Traveller community, you will harness the tools, techniques and practices of counter-mapping, oral histories and housing justice to challenge racist narratives on accommodating Gypsy and Traveller nomadism.
The project will invert established approaches to mapping and oral history to expose the impacts that limiting nomadic practices is having on Gypsy and Traveller communities over time. It will document the decline of official sites, accepted "stopping places," and the gradual criminalisation of nomadism, including the recent criminalisation of trespass.
Through a novel lens that centres Gypsies and Travellers in contemporary debates on social exclusion and housing justice, it will challenge their long-standing marginalisation.