The QARANC Association PhD Scholarship is managed by the QARANC Association Heritage and Chattels Committee.
CONTEXT
The Association has a particular interest in the heritage of the Corps with one of the Objects of the Association being, “Fostering esprit de corps, comradeship and the welfare of the corps and preserving its traditions.”, something that is also made clear in the establishment, and the Terms of Reference, of the Heritage and Chattels Committee.
Although much has been written about the history of Army nursing, and many scholars continue to research and write our history, there is a lack of authoritative writing from the perspective of Army nurses themselves. It has been difficult for Army nurses, serving or retired, to gain the necessary skills and standing to be able to write history that is acceptable in academic and scholarly contexts. There are members of the Association who would like the opportunity to gain these skills at Doctoral level, in order to advance the body of knowledge from within Army nursing.
SCHOLARSHIP
The QARANC Association has fully funded a PhD Scholar from within the Association membership to undertake PhD studies at Cardiff University commencing October 2019. The main supervisor will be Professor Holly Furneaux of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University.
RESEARCH AREA
This project will be the first to research a growing number of nurses’ autograph and scrap-books held in the QARANC archives at the Museum of Military Medicine. Assembled by Army nurses, these works contain inscriptions, verses, original poetry, and sketches by the military personnel gathered within the wards. They typically include humorous cartoons of ward and camp life, landscapes seen from hospital and on campaign, and detailed nature drawings.
Focusing on the First World War the work will draw on the wider QARANC archives, including diaries, journals and notebooks, as well as autograph and scrap-books held in other archives including at the Royal College of Nursing, the Imperial War Museum, and the National Museum of Wales. It will also draw on the nurses’ official service records at the National Archives.
The research will set the autograph and scrap-books in the context of the nurse compiler’s biography, the community of contributors, the specific operational environments and the period of production. This will allow a comparison between these books, highlighting any differences between the characters and the creativity of the nurses who curated these collections, and the nursing, military, and civilian interactions in different wards and hospitals.
It will develop an established field exploring the dynamics of interactions between nurses, doctors, patients and civilian hospital visitors. It will also contribute to an emerging scholarly interest in the creative culture of military hospitals (eg. Reznick, Carden Coyne, Bamji), and will build upon the supervisor’s exploration of the production of soldier art in military hospitals. Work on these previously unexplored materials will enrich our understanding of nurses’ creativity and of gendered and power relationships within military medical culture.
If you are interested in becoming an Association scholar then send us a message via the Contact page..