PhD Studentship: Global Commodities in Early Modern Wills’: A Leverhulme Trust funded PhD Studentship in the Department of Archaeology and History

A PhD studentship analysing global commodities described in early modern wills is available as part of a project at Exeter University and the National Archives. The project uses Transkribus to provide a database of 25,000 transcribed wills for analysis.

A PhD studentship is available as part of Leverhulme Trust-funded research project ‘The Material Culture of Wills: England 1540-1790’. This PhD focuses on the global commodities mentioned in wills, examining their nature, incidence and change over time. The project uses cutting-edge digital humanities techniques to automate the transcription of 25,000 wills from the National Archives. The successful candidate will be provided with a pre-populated database of these wills to analyse for their PhD research.

The period from 1540 to 1790 saw an influx of goods from outside Europe into English homes. These included Indian cotton (calico) and silks, Chinese porcelain, and exotic woods. In addition, objects associated with the consumption of global foodstuffs also appear, such as sugar bowls, coffee pots, and a range of items associated with tea drinking. The importing of goods can be studied via other types of document. However, wills are unique revealing not only ownership but attitudes towards these goods indicating how they were assimilated into English homes and families.

Themes explored in the PhD are likely to include: the types of global commodities found in English wills and the chronology and quantification of their spread; the types of will-makers who owned such goods (with the possibility of case studies of particular groups such as mariners, merchants, gentry, and those resident abroad); the ways such possessions were described and who they were bequeathed to, as evidence of attitudes towards these objects, with comparisons made with traditional English/European items such as silverware and woollen cloth (with the possibility of case studies of particular types of objects such as calico cloth or porcelain).

Questions to be explored will include: how were new goods from outside Europe adopted and assimilated into English lifestyles? At what date and where did different types of global commodities first appear in English wills? What types of will-makers were most likely to adopt them? How does this relate to the patterns of adoption documented in studies of probate inventories? Do the wills of mariners, merchants and those resident abroad suggest that they acted as conduits and innovators in the adoption of new goods? What does the description of global goods and associated objects (such as tea equipment) and the way they were bequeathed reveal about people’s attitudes to these goods?

Involvement in the project provides advantages that are not available for a standalone PhD. These include: (1) the provision of a ready-made dataset to work with; (2) working as part of team in developing approaches to quantitative analysis of the dataset; (3) a grounding in digital humanities research methods including Transkribus and crowdsourcing through discussions with other project members; (4) a six-week placement at TNA during their studentship, to understand the archival context of early modern manuscript documents and their preservation; and (5) an opportunity to publish research in project publications.

Duration and value of award

The studentship will be for a period of up to 3 years (36 months), dependent on satisfactory progress, and will cover full tuition fees and an annual maintenance grant of £18,622 (2023/24 rate).