The UKRI-funded 5-year project, 'Colombo: Layered Histories in the Global South City', selected for funding by the European Research Council under its 'HORIZON' programme, is recruiting to its doctoral studentship.
Colombo has a deeply layered imperial past. It came under a succession of European empires, Portuguese (first trading post in 1518), Dutch (1656-1796) and British (1796-1948). It was also pivotal to the early globalisation of Islam and has housed a series of diasporic and minority communities. This project interrogates how invaders and residents made a city in an unstable environment at the centre of the Indian Ocean, in which arose a diverse society, generating an abundance of cultural production and a sequence of violent politics. The four pathways of research are as follows:
1) In environmental terms, this multiply-colonised and repeatedly-engineered city is built in a wetland without a significant natural harbour; 2) In social terms, in a heavily nationalised state, the city has resisted indigeneity, as it is inhabited by many minority communities with long narrations of origin; 3) As for culture, Colombo was represented in keeping with recurrent motifs, as a site of transit across the Indian Ocean, including for enslaved and indentured labour as well as settlers; 4) And on politics, the heavy work needed, at the bridge of sea and land set one context for the rise of urban violence between communities in the midst of civil war in addition to sustained strikes and new political movements.
At its broadest perspective, the project aims to develop resources with which to consider the pasts, presents and futures of this global South city as located within the remit of other global South cities elsewhere.
The doctoral candidate's work on this project will fall under themes 2) environment and/or 4) culture. This five-year project is led by Professor Sujit Sivasundaram. The successful applicant will join a team of researchers, including postdoctoral fellows and an existing doctoral student. Their research will contribute to a wider collaborative project.
The doctoral studentship will pay full tuition fees at the University of Cambridge over three years. It also provides a maintenance allowance of £20,780 per year and a budget for training and research.