PhD in Cultural Heritage

Cultural Heritage in HCA

Heritage is a thriving area of research and teaching in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA). Staff in Archaeology, History and Classics are involved in an array of projects that focus on the contemporary meanings, values and significance of objects, places and traditions from the past, and on how they are performed, interpreted, understood and managed today. 

Many of these projects are interdisciplinary and involve cutting-edge techniques including computational ones. 

Our heritage expertise covers:

• Public archaeology
• Public history
• Heritage and identity
• Difficult and contested histories and heritage
• Politics of the past
• Classical reception
• Digital heritage
• Sustainable heritage
• Marine heritage
• Heritage and development
• Community archives and museums

Staff and Research Projects

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD focused on a heritage topic with supervisors in HCA, please do consider contacting Dr Jonathan Gardner, who can advise you on possible supervisors. 

Alternatively you can reach out directly to members of staff in HCA who are working on heritage topics and are welcoming students in this field:

Doing a PhD in Cultural Heritage

We welcome PhD students working on heritage topics across the globe. There are different ways to do cultural heritage topics at PhD level in HCA:

• If you wish to develop a heritage project with a specific historical, archaeological, or classical dimension you can apply to our PhD programmes in History (including Scottish History and Economic and Social History), Archaeology and Classics. We have current students working on cultural heritage topics on all of these programmes. Specific queries about these programmes can be directed to the Graduate Officers responsible for them, who are named on the specific programme websites.
• The School also collaborates with colleagues in Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) on their interdisciplinary Cultural Heritage PhD programme. This programme is based in ECA, but supervisors on the programme can be from anywhere in the University. This means you could have two supervisors, perhaps a heritage researcher with an archaeology background and a historian, from HCA, even though you would be based in ECA. For more details about the structure of this programme, you can contact the programme director, Professor Ed Hollis (ed.hollis@ed.ac.uk). 

Whether you are interested in pursing a PhD project on heritage through one of the HCA programmes or via the ECA Cultural Heritage PhD, you should first get in touch with a prospective supervisor and discuss your planned project with them. They can advise you on the feasibility of your plans and which programme might suit you, who else could be on your supervisory team, and answer other queries. Any of the HCA staff listed above will be happy to answer questions.