Mary Immaculate College (MIC) is delighted to announce that applications are now being accepted for the Department of Geography Postgraduate Scholarship designed to support students undertaking postgraduate research at the College.
According to Professor Des McCafferty, Head of the Geography Department, “The Department is a dynamic division within MIC’s Faculty of Arts. The department has a strong research profile and track record of successfully attracting research funding both from public and private sources. Our commitment to leading edge study is evidenced by the provision of this significant scholarship opportunity. The successful applicant will be part of a first-class community of research practice supported by responsive research supervision and mentoring and career development support schemes.”
The Scholarship is to support postgraduate research leading to the degree of either a Master of Arts (by research and thesis) or a PhD in one of six target areas, which span both physical and human geography. The research areas include Coastal Communities and the Climate Crisis; Retrofitting the City for Sustainable Urban Living; A Palaeoenvironmental Analysis of the Late Pleistocene Central Mediterranean Sea; Measuring the Environmental Effectiveness of the Grassroots TidyTowns Model; Public Vaccination and the State in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Ireland – A Geographical Analysis; and Human Security and Geographies of Migration in North Africa.
The scholarship provides a fees waiver, up to the value of €4,403, and an annual stipend of €12,600. There is no requirement for the holder of the award to help the department, but s/he may do so on a voluntary basis. The PhD award is for a maximum of four years, and the Master's award is for a maximum of two years, commencing in September 2021.
Prof. McCafferty goes on to say “Faculty members and postgraduate students within the department form a strong and mutually supportive community of scholars, into which new postgraduate students are integrated. All members are research active, and have successfully supervised postgraduate research at Master's and /or PhD levels. Members of the department have also held leadership roles in professional associations, both nationally and internationally.”
The Department of Geography aims to pursue pioneering research that addresses new and emerging fields of enquiry. Team research interests are wide and varied, and include urbanisation, regional and local development, challenges of low carbon transitions, and historical geography on the human side of the discipline, and environmental change, palaeoecology and the reconstruction of past environments on the physical side.
The Department has particular strengths in applied and policy-oriented research, and members have engaged in contract research and consultancy work with local, regional, national and international agencies in both the voluntary and statutory sectors.
The Department has successfully attracted research funding from bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and, via the Irish Social Science Platform, the Irish Government’s Programme for Research in third-level institutions. The Department is also a formal collaborator in the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) established in 2001, and in the International Centre for Regional and Local Development (ICLRD).
Application details
Application requirements for the award is by email to jeannette.ferguson@mic.ul.ie. The email should outline, briefly, your motivation in applying for the award, and must include the following as attachments:
- The completed application form (copy available here)
- A brief CV and, if you do not already hold a postgraduate qualification, the academic transcript from your undergraduate studies (preferably in PDF format)
- A research proposal outlining, as appropriate: (i) the research question(s) and the aims and objectives of the research; (ii) a suitable theoretical and / or conceptual framework for the research; (iii) a brief literature review; (iv) methodologies for primary data collection and analysis; and (v) a schedule for completion of the research.
The proposal must relate to one of the research areas outlined in the scholarship documentation, and it should set out your ideas about how the research can be developed.
Selection of the successful candidate will be by the Postgraduate Applications Committee of the Department of Geography, and will be based on the written application and an interview which will be conducted online. Interviews are likely to be conducted in the week of 7-11 June.
Closing date for applications: 28 May 2021
Full details of the award, including the target research areas, are available here.
