The Centre for Urban History at Leicester University offers a PhD studentship funded by the Leverhulme trust. The studentship contributes to a project on “Automobility and the Urban Environment in Nagoya and Birmingham, c.1955-1973”. This is a great opportunity to work on an interesting topic with the support of the CUH. I really like the comparative aspect of it.
I am using the spare time after finishing a major article ahead of time to prepare my report for the German Academic Exchange Service that has funded my PostDoc job at Leicester. This is leisurely writing …
Just talked to my PostDoc colleague Dan Horner here at the Cnetre for Urban History on initiating a small reading group on “materiality”. There are some great text out there that are worth reading. My favorite - in a way - still being Ted Schatzki’s “Nature and Technology” in the History and Theory from 2003. It has many problems, but it still is extremely inspiring. Unfortunately one of my other favorites of which at least some chapters relate to materiality, Karl Schloegel’s “Im raume lesen wir die Zeit” is only available in German. But there will be enough to read and I am actually very excited that I don’t seem to be the only person who wants to inquire into the fild of “materiality” and find out what it has in store for historical research.
