Join to apply for the PhD Studentship role at King\'s College London Join to apply for the PhD Studentship role at King\'s College London The British Film Institute (BFI) and King’s College London (KCL) are pleased to announce a fully funded collaborative doctoral studentship under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships scheme. This project aims to bring to light the collection of advertisements broadcast across all main commercial public service broadcast channels in the UK since 2016. The analysis will be carried out through a computational humanities approach that can make these moving images an open record of the transformation of social and economic values in the UK’s recent history. This project will be jointly supervised by: Stephen McConnachie , Head of Data & Digital Preservation, BFI The student will be expected to spend time at both King\'s College London and the BFI sites, as well as to become part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK. The studentship can be undertaken either full or part-time. We encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates from different backgrounds and at different career stages. Students should have a Master\'s degree in a relevant subject or be able to demonstrate relevant equivalent experience in a professional setting such as screen heritage or cultural informatics. The studentship is open to both home and international applicants. See details below. Project Overview Over the past decades, many collections of moving images have been digitised, catalogued and preserved in various formats and at different scales in numerous archives around the world. The BFI National Archive is one of the most important collections of film and television globally. It holds a living and expanding record of the evolution of the moving image over the past 90 years, including digital-born content across major television channels in the UK. Since the 1980s, the BFI has been capturing and preserving off-air television from UK public service broadcasters, including all advertisements broadcast across all main commercial PSB channels since 2016. Advertisements are the “literature of economics”, and in aggregate these TV adverts are likely to be the largest collection of its kind worldwide and one of the most significant records of consumer culture in the UK over the past decade. However, this collection is fragmented and scattered across thousands of hours of digital video, and despite its cultural significance it remains entirely undocumented and therefore inaccessible. This project aims to (i) define this wealth of material into a usable collection; (ii) develop a systematic understanding of the collection as a record of consumer culture in the UK; and (iii) create the kind of documentation that opens this resource for open research across disciplines and to wider audiences. The challenge to bring such collection to light is technical as much as a conceptual ― it requires the student to critically reimagine and reshape advertisement records as computational objects. To tackle this challenge, the project adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines interpretive frameworks in film, television and media scholarship with advanced methods in computational humanities to design a “computational lens” with which to machine-see the archive. The aim is not only to identify, extract, and catalogue the adverts, but also to understand them in context as an evolving record of social norms, values and relations, as they are expressed in UK screen culture. The student will have the opportunity to bring their own focus to identify suitable angles to explore this collection through appropriate sampling. At the same time, the new methods and tools developed for this project will impact the wider heritage sector, insofar as its institutions and preservation practices increasingly rely on large collections of highly fragmented peripheral visual records. Drawing out patterns that are useful to humanities inquiry from large collections of images will have wide applicability for visual cultural heritage beyond the specificity of consumer culture. Core research questions: How has promotional screen culture in Britain changed over the past decade? How to access, understand, and analyse this transformation in screen culture from a computational perspective? Research with the BFI This research studentship is allocated by the AHRC to the BFI. The successful student will be expected to spend time carrying out research and gaining relevant experience at the BFI National Archive in Berkhamsted and the BFI’s London sites, as appropriate, as part of the studentship. The successful candidate will be encouraged to participate in professional development events and activities organised for all Collaborative Doctoral Partnership students who are registered with different universities and studying with cultural and heritage organisations across the UK. These activities are organised by a coordination team based at the V&A and are designed to provide CDP researchers with the knowledge, networks and skills to thrive in their future careers. Training and support The beneficiary of this studentship will be able to pursue careers in academia and the screen sector; in cultural heritage, creative industries, or a combination of the two. Examples of areas of employment available to a student with the profile acquired through this doctorate are Data and Moving Image Preservation, Cultural Data Analyst/Steward, Data and Insights for cultural organisations; R&D in digital and computational technologies for the screen sector. To give the student the knowledge and skills needed to be competitive in these areas, a competency audit will be conducted based on the European Competence Framework for Researchers ( ResearchComp ). Based on this audit, we will draft a specific training plan to develop the skills needed to succeed in this studentship. The exact plan will be tailored to actual student needs, but it is expected that activities will include a combination of formal and self-guided training, including auditing modules offered by the college, ad doc training through King’s e-Research , and on-demand research skills training from the college’s doctoral development provision. Besides skills training, emphasis will be placed in three core competencies: (i) conducting interdisciplinary research & participating in the publication process; (ii) creating inter-institutional networks; and (iii) building mentor-mentee relationships. By developing these competencies during the studentship, this project aims to build resilience and enable the student to establish a career in or outside of academia. Award value CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 48 months (4 years) or part-time equivalent up to a maximum of 8 years. The award pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home fee. Research Councils UK Indicative fee level for 2025/2026 is £5,006. Students with an ‘overseas’ fee status are welcome to apply. If successful, King’s College London will waive the difference between home and international fee rates for the selected international student. The student will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD. The award pays an annual stipend for all students, both home and international students. Note that this stipend is tax free, and is the equivalent of an annual salary, enabling the student to pay living costs. The UKRI Minimum Doctoral Stipend for 2025-2026 is £20,780 plus London Weighting of £2000/year. There is also a CDP maintenance payment of £600 per year. More details can be found on the UKRI website . The successful candidate is eligible to receive an additional travel and related expenses grant from the BFI, worth up to £500 per year for the duration of the project (equivalent of 4 years if studied part-time). Seniority level Seniority level Entry level Employment type Employment type Temporary Job function Job function Research Industries Higher Education Referrals increase your chances of interviewing at King\'s College London by 2x Sign in to set job alerts for “Postdoctoral Researcher” roles. 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