PHD FUNDING: Writing from the Margins: Irish Women’s Narratives from the Long Eighteenth Century
With funding from Trinity Research Doctorate Awards 2025–26 PI-led, applications are now invited for a funded PhD studentship on the MARGINS project, to commence September 2025 (possibility of March 2026), under the supervision of Dr Amy Prendergast in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.
The award will cover tuition fees (either EU or non-EU) for the recruited student for four years (full-time) and provide an annual stipend of €25,000.
The project
This project centres on the rich and extensive body of life writing produced by Irish women from 1690 to 1810. MARGINS strives towards inclusivity, and the source material will incorporate life writing by women of all ages and of different religious denominations.
Focusing on life writing allows marginalised voices to be recentred. MARGINS prioritises life writing ‘from below’, including oral testimonies and ephemera, as well as biographies, memoirs, and letters. It explores texts that have previously been overlooked and neglected, whether prose prefaces to the poetry of labouring class women or gallows speeches recorded on broadsides.
MARGINS champions life writing by those whose voices are often forgotten, including ‘fallen’ women, domestic servants, sex workers, and those charged with criminal offences. The corpus of material is vast, and the project will be divided into two work packages. The Principal Investigator will continue her focus on diaries and memoirs, while the PhD student will engage with other forms of life writing, guided by the PI.
Gender is at the core of this project, being central to its research objectives, outputs, and aims. The project actively contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
MARGINS contributes towards enhancing TCD’s local and global social and sustainability ambitions through the project’s key outputs:
- Doctoral thesis on Irish women’s life writing from the margins
- Establishment of a Life Writing Network at TCD
- International conference on life writing by underrepresented individuals and communities, with doctoral candidate on the organising committee
- An edited collection on women’s life writing from the margins, arising from output 3, with PhD candidate and PI chapters within this
- Workshops for advanced primary school pupils from DEIS schools led by PI and doctoral candidate, in collaboration with Marsh’s Library
Applications should consist of the following:
- a brief cover letter
- a CV (max. 2 pages)
- a sample of written work
- two academic references
Applications should be sent to Dr Amy Prendergast (Prendea1@tcd.ie) by 5pm, Tuesday 17 June. It is envisaged that shortlisted applicants will be interviewed online the week beginning 23 June. The final stage of the application process will involve the submission of a formal PhD proposal to Trinity via the my.tcd.ie portal (see admissions information, https://www.tcd.ie/english/postgraduate/phd–and–mlitt/ for more details on this).
The following may be considered the essential and desirable qualifications for the award:
Essential
- A first-class / high 2.1 (or equivalent) undergraduate degree in English or another relevant subject
- Willingness to engage with the public through conferences and workshops
- Willingness to participate in training and development activities
Desirable
- Experience of engaging with eighteenth-century literature and/or life writing
- Experience working with archives and archival libraries and repositories
- Strong communication and presentation skills
For further details of this on-site, full-time project or any inquiries about this award, please contact Dr Amy Prendergast at Prendea1@tcd.ie