Prospective graduate students

Graduate students are vital members of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Our research is multi-disciplinary in approach and our members come from varied academic backgrounds, including but not limited to history, geography, and demography.

If you are considering applying for an MPhil or PhD at the University of Cambridge, and your research proposal is relevant to our current or past research themes, please contact us at the earliest possible stage in your application process.

If you are interested in aspects of our research which cover economic or social history, please contact Dr Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Dr Chris Briggs, Dr Amy Erickson, Professor Paul Warde, or Dr Samantha Williams. Our students are normally registered in the Faculty of History and start their graduate work by taking the M.Phil in Economic and Social History.

If you are interested in aspects of our research which cover geography or demography (either historical or contemporary), please contact Dr Alice Reid. The Department of Geography provides specific guidance about the application process.

Benefits

The benefits of being a graduate member of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure are:

• Access to datasets and resources.
• A supportive research group environment. Members of the Group meet daily for coffee at 11am in each department, History and Geography, which provides the opportunity to informally discuss work and other topics of interest. We hold weekly joint sessions all together, which allow members to present work in progress and ask for advice and suggestions.
• Joining a community with a reputation for nurturing students who have gone on to have to successful careers in academia. Among former PhD students are the current Group members: Christopher Briggs, Alice Reid, Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Richard Smith, Paul Warde and Samantha Williams. See a full list of PhD theses completed at the Group.

Application process

All applications must be made via the University of Cambridge Graduate Admissions website, where you should register with your chosen department or faculty. Please contact the relevant Group members (as above) before you begin your application.

Full information about the graduate application process is available on the University of Cambridge Graduate Admissions website.

Funding

Current graduate students are funded by the ESRC, AHRC, Wellcome Trust, Gates Trust, Cambridge Trusts and a variety of other sources. For information on available graduate funding please see links below.

• General funding guide
• Additional funding available in the History Faculty (for historical research)

Current PhD students

You are welcome to contact our current PhD students.

PhD research projects (current)

• Infant and early childhood mortality decline in London, 1870-1929: a spatial and temporal analysis of its patterns, inequalities and policy impacts
• The Community-Based Health Insurance (CBHI) Scheme: The role of ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status in explaining differential health outcomes in Ethiopia
• Patterns of Female Employment in France, 1792-1901
• Occupational structure of Lower Yangzi River Region, 1736-2010
• Nineteenth Century English Rural Population Mobility and Small Market Towns
• Commercial Networks and Occupational Structures of the West Country transatlantic dry cod trade, c.1570-1650
• Dividing the day: Gender, work and time-use in 18th and 19th century Britain
• Agrarian Change in an Industrializing County: Staffordshire, 1650-1750

PhD research projects (completed since 2009)

• On shape and being shaped: the relation between overweight and obesity in London's schoolchildren and the energy-expending characteristics of their built environment
• Occupational Structure of Late Imperial China, 1738 – 1899
• Imprisonment for Debt and Female Financial Failure in the long Eighteenth Century
• Manorial Officeholding in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, 1300-1600
• The Environmental History of the National Grid The Process of Electrification: Infrastructure and Influence
• Predictors and consequences of variability in secondary educational attainment in rural India: A life course approach
• The male occupational structure of England and Wales, 1650-1850
• An occupational analysis of the worsted industry, circa 1700-1851. A study of de-industrialization in Norfolk and the rise of the West Riding of Yorkshire
• Leaving home and migrating in nineteenth-century England and Wales: Evidence from the 1881 Census Enumerators' Books (CEBs)
• Women's Employment in England and Wales, 1851-1911
• Immobility and the immobile: A case study of Long Melford, Suffolk 1661-1861
• The urban back garden in England in the 18th and 19th centuries
• The emergence of agrarian capitalism in early modern England: A reconsideration of farm sizes
• Wills and bequests: Male and female testators in medieval East Anglia 1400-1520
• The historical geography of illegitimacy in the Gurk Valley, Austria, c. 1868 to 1945
• Population in nineteenth-century Vila do Conde: The demographic dynamics of a north-western Portuguese urban parish
• Census taking, political economy and state formation in Britain c. 1790-1840
• Fertility, morality and marriage in Northwest Tanzania, 1920-1970: a demographic study using parish registers
• Registration practices in Anglican parishes and Non-Conformist groups in northern England 1770-1840