Collaborative Doctoral Studentship
Start Date: 1st October 2026
Application Deadline: 23:59 BST on the 24th April 2026
Interviews: 21st May 2026 in London
The BT Group Archives (BTGA) and University College London (UCL) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded doctoral studentship from 1st October 2026 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) scheme.
The student will critically investigate, develop and make use of new research methods, based on advances in machine learning and knowledge organisation, for exploring the significant moving image collection at BT Group Archives. This project will be jointly supervised by James Elder and Elspeth Millar (BTGA), and Professor Andrew Flinn and Dr Daniel Wilson, in the Department of Information Studies (DIS) at UCL. The student will be expected to spend time at both BT Group and UCL, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP-funded students across the UK.
Project Overview
BT Group Archives is engaged in a decade-long effort to digitise eighty years of moving image material held on vulnerable film and videotape formats. ‘Lossless’ digital copies are being created, linked to metadata, and made available. This throws up timely questions in relation to knowledge organisation and access that this PhD project will address in theory and practice.
The collection begins in the 1930s with the work of the GPO Film Unit (part of the UNESCO Memory of the World register) and continues without interruption to the present. The overriding theme of the collection is the transformation of communications and the creation of an ‘Information Society’, as recorded in the archive of this unique organisation, whose development charts key changes in twentieth-century British history. As the Post Office and then British Telecom, this changed from being a Government Department to a nationalised industry and then a private company. The archive therefore records the activities of a very significant organisation: employer of thousands, providing communications services to millions of customers.
Despite the collection being an important historical source, it would be prohibitively labour-intensive to make it available to potential users by cataloguing and organising it manually. Recent developments in audio recognition and computer vision, could potentially help create new catalogue metadata automatically, which could be structured and linked in flexible ways. The student will explore and develop the potential of these new methods, and themselves conduct a substantive piece of research showcasing new insights into the collection and new forms of enquiry more generally.
Outcomes of the doctoral project could include: comprehensive new metadata for the moving image collection; publishable code and documentation and a substantive research paper. The student may also develop workshops and teaching material to widen engagement with this new material, as well as a proof-of-concept – practical and theoretical – for the creation of re-usable methods for BTGA as well as other archives facing similar challenges. Such methods should aim to aid discoverability while addressing the complex challenges facing the uses of ‘AI’ in the sector as a whole. The written component of the thesis will be adjusted to reflect these other forms of output.
Core research questions may include asking:
- Can computational methods be used to develop practical and scalable tools that can be deployed by BTGA and comparable archives?
- Can computational methods help meet the needs of different users and audiences?
- Can computational methods allow new forms of research with this archive?
In addition, the project may also engage with topical issues relating to:
The costs and benefits of computational archival practices: their sustainability and openness, including in relation to energy use, copyright and reproducibility; their accuracy and reliability; their risks in relation to bias and privacy.
We hope to see a substantive piece of new research based on the collection in itself. This will be determined in collaboration with the student; however, a strong theme suggested by the collection relates to changes in the workplace during the 20th century, arising from changes in information technology.
Benefits and opportunities
The successful candidate will be registered with the Department of Information Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at UCL. UCL is London’s leading multidisciplinary university, ranked 9th in the 2026 QS World University Rankings and rated 2nd in the UK for research power in the Research Excellence Framework 2021. UCL:DIS is an international centre for research and teaching in the fields of digital humanities, archival studies, librarianship, publishing, and data science, and is host to the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. The Department, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the UCL Doctoral School all offer complementary programmes for research training and personal development for doctoral students across the University. All doctoral students in UCL:DIS are enrolled on compulsory research methods and training classes in their first year to support their research plan development, writing skills, research ethics and appropriate research methods. These classes and other departmental activities support the research student cohort and individual research development.
At BTGA the student will benefit from staff-level access to the BT’s archive collection, resources and in-house training and development opportunities, including:
• The practical and theoretical elements of working in a busy corporate archive holding a variety of record types, and with a broad range of users;
• Experience identifying, interpreting, and preserving analogue and digital audiovisual formats;
• Opportunities to work with BT’s Data and AI team.
This collaborative PhD studentship offers the opportunity to combine academic training with practice-based experience and research behind the scenes of a major heritage collection within a FTSE 100 corporation.
As a SMAC (Science Museums and Archives Consortium) CDP student they will have access to networking and support from a cohort of SMAC students based at the Science Museum Group, Kew Gardens, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Society. The student will also benefit from a dedicated programme of CDP Consortium events delivered in tandem with the other museums, galleries and heritage organisations affiliated with the AHRC CDP scheme, designed to provide CDP researchers with the knowledge, networks and skills to thrive in their future careers, and co-ordinated by the V&A Museum.
Details of Award
CDP doctoral training grants fund full-time studentships for 4 years or part-time equivalent up to a maximum of 7 years. The award pays tuition fees up to the value of the full-time home fee (£5,238) while students with an ‘overseas’ fee status will receive an international fee waiver from UCL and will therefore pay the same as ‘home’ students. International students will be required to reside in the UK until completion of the PhD.
The award pays an annual stipend for all students, both home and international students. This stipend is tax free, and is the equivalent of an annual salary, enabling the student to pay living costs. The UKRI Minimum Doctoral Stipend is £21,805 plus London Weighting of £2000/year. There is also a CDP maintenance payment of £600 per year. Further details can be found on the UKRI website.
The successful candidate is eligible to receive an additional travel and related expenses grant during the course of the project courtesy of BTGA worth up to £1000 per year for 4 years.
Eligibility
This studentship is open to both Home and International applicants.
To be classed as a home student, candidates must meet the following criteria:
- Be a UK or Irish National (meeting residency requirements), or
- Have settled status, or
- Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or
- Have indefinite leave to remain or enter.
- The latest revision of the AHRC Training Grant Funding Guide.
- International students are eligible to receive the full award for maintenance as are home students.
NB. All applicants must meet UKRI terms and conditions for funding.
Applicant Information
Applicants should be graduates and have or expect to receive a Masters-level qualification in a relevant subject or discipline including, but not limited to: archival studies, library and information studies, history, film or media studies, computer or data science, computer vision, multimodal AI, digital humanities or cultural analytics; or, be able to demonstrate equivalent experience in a cultural heritage institution or other relevant professional setting.
Applicants must be able to demonstrate an interest in archives and digital cultural heritage and the potential and enthusiasm for developing their technical skills in related areas.
UCL and BTGA are keen to encourage the widest range of potential students to study for this studentship. We particularly welcome applications from people of Global Majority backgrounds as they are currently underrepresented in doctoral student cohorts.
How to Apply
To apply for this studentship, you must submit an online application to UCL via the website by 23:59 on Friday 24th April 2026, ensuring that your application includes the title: ‘Moving the Frame: New Computational Practices for the Description and Organisation of the BT Film Collection’ and should indicate supervisors: Andrew Flinn and Daniel Wilson.
Your application should include:
- CV (2 pages)
- Cover Letter (1 page)
- Research Statement (2 pages)
Your CV and cover letter should indicate your motivation, skills and experience for working on this project. You should also include a research statement of no more than 2 pages outlining your particular interest and potential approach to the project.
For informal queries regarding the project please contact Daniel Wilson (daniel.c.s.wilson@ucl.ac.uk) or James Elder (james.elder@bt.com). We ask all applicants to complete a voluntary EDI monitoring form here. All responses are anonymous.
Should you require any reasonable adjustments or support throughout the application process, please contact Terrie Fiawoo, Department Manager, DIS (t.fiawoo@ucl.ac.uk).
The CDP consortium will host an online webinar for prospective applicants on 13 April 2026 at 11:00. These webinars will provide an overview of the CDP funding scheme.
To sign up for a webinar, please email cdp@vam.ac.uk with the subject line “Prospective Applicant Webinar” from the email address you would like to join the online meeting from.
Sign up will close on 10 April 2026 at 17:00.
Please note, the webinars will not focus on individual projects.