Details
The School of English at the University of Sheffield is pleased to advertise three PhD projects funded by the Champernowne Trust and the bequest of Sheffield theatre director Geoffrey Ost. Successful applicants will receive an award to cover 3.5 years of home student fees + £5K research expenses per project. Each project will work on The Irene Champernowne Archive. This is a large collection of documents and artefacts related to the life and work of Irene Champernowne (1901 - 1976), a pioneering British psychotherapist influenced by the theories of Carl Jung who championed creativity and the arts as important aids for recovery from mental illness. The archive is housed by Special Collections and more information on the archive is available here.
The projects will start in September 2026. Applicants are invited to apply for one or more of the projects outlined below (each project will support one PhD student). To apply, please complete the application form by 5pm on 31st January 2026. Applicants should have a good first degree (2:1 or equivalent); a Masters level qualification and have English as their first language or an overall IELTS grade of 7.5 with a minimum score of 7.0 in each component. The form also requests applicants provide:
- An indication of which project they are applying for
- Details of past and current research qualifications
- A statement of research interests and their relevance to the project applied for
- Names of two academic references
Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application by 31st March 2026. Any questions about the application process should be directed to the School’s Director of Research, Emma Moore (e.moore@sheffield.ac.uk). Any questions about the individual projects should be directed to the supervisors of those projects.
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Project 1. Therapeutic Communities
In contrast to psychoanalysis, counselling or psychotherapy taking place, more often than not, in a consulting room in an urban space, therapeutic communities function on the basis of a group, outdoors, in retreats or more remote locations, in forests or residential compounds. Therapeutic communities also exist in contradistinction to the institution and the asylum and the ‘mortification of the self’ (Goffman, 1961) historically practiced there, instead imagining therapeutic interventions that focus on autonomy, creativity, and support.
The University of Sheffield holds the Irene Champernowne archive, a large collection of documents and artefacts related to the life and work of Irene Champernowne (1901–1976), a pioneering British psychotherapist influenced by the theories of Carl Jung who championed creativity and the arts as important aids for recovery from mental illness. Champernowne set up and led the Withymead Centre in Devon, one of the first therapeutic communities in the UK. The Centre delivered a treatment model based on Jung’s theories and methods, and blended together art, music and dance-movement therapy with clinical support, in a community environment that sought to create lasting rehabilitation.
The proposed PhD project should make use of the archive and include work on the Withymead Centre; the rest of the project on the concept of therapeutic communities can include any other case studies to broach the subject and research the following questions and areas of interest:
- how is the idea of a therapeutic community articulated materially, socially and politically;
- how is therapy performed and how does it function in therapeutic communities, including, for example, through the use of psychedelics;
- how do therapeutic communities reflect changing attitudes to mental health, and what is the relationship between therapeutic communities and the concept of ‘wellness’;
- can therapeutic communities decolonise therapy or do they further entrench the link between therapy and whiteness;
- can therapeutic communities imagine the more-than-human