Overview
This interdisciplinary PhD project investigates the environmental, industrial and colonial legacies of the Manchester Ship Canal, one of the great engineering feats of the Victorian era. While historians have explored the canal’s industrial and political importance, its environmental and colonial dimensions remain largely overlooked. This PhD will address this gap by tracing the canal’s profound and lasting impact on both local ecologies and global networks. It will also examine how the canal was intertwined with Britain’s imperial networks, revealing how colonial resources and labour underpinned industrial progress at home.
About this opportunity
This PhD project explores the environmental, industrial, and colonial legacies of the Manchester Ship Canal, a monumental Victorian engineering achievement that transformed Manchester into a global inland port. Completed in 1894 at a cost of £15 million, the canal revolutionised trade and industry in northwest England by providing Manchester with direct access to the Atlantic reshaping patterns of commerce and power traditionally centred on coastal ports. While its economic and political importance is well documented, the canal’s environmental and colonial histories remain largely ignored.
Aim and Objectives
The aim of this project is to investigate how the Manchester Ship Canal’s construction and operation altered regional water systems, contributed to pollution, impacted local communities and reshaped local landscapes and ecosystems, this will be achieved through four objectives, which are:
- To examine the archives documenting the mapping, financing, construction, and socio-political history of the canal, exploring the post-construction management of the Manchester Ship Canal.
- To engage the communities along the canal and identify whether ‘forgotten or alternative narratives’ exist within these communities, using a range of source materials, both formal and informal.
- To assess the pre- and post-construction environmental history of the canal, spanning from the waters themselves and its users, through to the communities along its route.
- Evaluate how the canal was intertwined with Britain’s imperial networks, revealing how colonial resources and labour underpinned industrial progress at home.
Methods
The project will draw on archival research, cultural and historical geography, and environmental humanities’ methods to develop a new understanding of industrial modernity’s ecological costs. Research will be conducted in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (London) for archival research and placement. Further archival research will be undertaken at the Wellcome Collection, Manchester Archives, and the Canal & River Trust Archives in Ellesmere Port, providing exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary engagement with heritage and environmental organisations.
This project is offered as part of The AHRC-NERC Living Well with Water [LWwW] Doctoral Focal Award at the University’s of Hull and Liverpool, in partnership with National Trust, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Tate Liverpool. By applying for one of our fully funded interdisciplinary doctoral awards you will explore the relationship between water, culture and community in coastal regions and become part of a new generation of researchers shaping solutions to urgent human and planetary health challenges.
You will participate in our innovative doctoral training programme, undertake a placement with one of our partner organisations, and learn research skills transferable to a variety of future careers. https://www.hull.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/funded-opportunities/living-well-with-water