PhD project in Finding “home” in a cultural landscape of migration and belonging

Migration history plays an important role in the shaping of identity for departure and receiving countries. How these histories are constructed and feed into contemporary, popular narratives of home and belonging remains contentious, especially in a place such as Northern Ireland. Using the Irish Emigration Database, a digital archive held at the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, this project explores historical articulations of ‘home’ and belonging in letters from 1700-1950. Questions of how these historical articulations have contributed to public and academic narratives of home and, in turn, contemporary understandings of identity are at the heart of this project.

Migration plays a vital role in Northern Ireland’s history, its present, and its future. This became particularly prominent over the summer of 2024 when anti-immigrant rhetoric made the news and filled the streets across the UK and Ireland. Crucial within these conversations are Ireland’s own histories of migration. How these histories are constructed and feed into contemporary, popular narratives of home and belonging remains contentious, especially in Northern Ireland, but what shapes the ‘story’ of history?

With a strong emphasis on public engagement and interpretation, this PhD – and the student that undertakes it – will explore how the ‘story’ of migration, historically and in the present day, can be more clearly entered into the multiple histories of Northern Ireland.

The history of emigration from Ulster is still frequently siloed from the historiography of Irish emigration and diaspora. Scholarship focusing on migration from Ulster has primarily created an image of Protestants moving to rural areas in the South of the United States and the prairies of Canada. While this was true to an extent, Irish historiography has pointed to the movement of many from Ulster to northern cities in the United States as well. A false binary of “Irish” Catholics from the southern counties moving to urban areas and Protestants from the northern counties moving to rural areas continues, and not only in the historiography. This is also reflected in the public narratives surrounding emigration on the island of Ireland. This PhD project will seek to more fully recognise the realities of migration to and from the north of Ireland.

The main source base for this project will be the Irish Emigration Database (IED), a virtual archive of 32,194 documents, of which approximately 4,000 are letters relating to historic Irish migration to North America between 1700 and 1950. The IED is held by the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies (MCMS) and has yet to be used systematically for historical research into migration from Ulster. Inspired by contemporary debates, this project focuses on migration, belonging, and home building in the past and how this migration story connects to the development of contemporary understandings of identity in Northern Ireland and/or Ulster. The time-period covered by the IED, 1700 to 1950, allows for nuanced perspectives on identity and the emotional shifts prompted by not only migration from one place to another, but also between rural and urban spaces internally and internationally.

How these articulations of identity have been seized upon in contemporary society provide further opportunities to explore how migration stories feed into post-conflict societies such as Northern Ireland. As the PhD candidate will be based between Queen’s University Belfast and the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, they will have opportunities to explore both the academic and the public narratives of historical migration to, within and from Ulster. Due to the close links that MCMS has with local community groups, they will explore the way that these public narratives contribute to current discussions around Northern Irish identities and the place held for migrants. They will therefore be expected to consider how the IED dataset can feed into exhibitions and public narratives around migration in urban (Belfast) and rural (Omagh district) settings.

Bridging the fields of migration and diaspora studies, history, and memory studies, this project seeks to complicate ideas of ‘home building’ and belonging from both the sending and receiving societies’ perspectives in historical and current contexts. The candidate with work with co-supervisors Dr Sophie Cooper (QUB) and Dr Patrick Fitzgerald (MCMS).

Funding Information

The School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast is offering a CAST Department for the Economy Studentship for October 2025 entry. The studentship will cover tuition fees and stipend. The current stipend for 24/25 academic year is £19,237 but 25/26 has yet to be determined but this tends to go up each year in line with inflation. Student fees can be found at this link: https://www.qub.ac.uk/Study/postgraduate/tuition-fees/

To be eligible for consideration for a DfE Studentship (covering tuition fees and maintenance stipend), a candidate must satisfy all the eligibility criteria based on nationality, residency, and academic qualifications. The Studentship is open to UK and ROI nationals, and to EU nationals with settled status in the UK, subject to meeting the specific DfE nationality and residency criteria. Full eligibility information can be viewed at https://www.economy-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/economy/postgraduate-studentships-terms-conditions.pdf

Entrance requirements

Graduate
The minimum academic requirement for admission to a research degree programme is normally an Upper Second Class Honours degree from a UK or ROI HE provider, or an equivalent qualification acceptable to the University. Further information can be obtained by contacting the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics.

International Students

For information on international qualification equivalents, please check the specific information for your country.

English Language Requirements

Evidence of an IELTS* score of 6.5, with not less than 5.5 in any component, or equivalent qualification acceptable to the University is required (*taken within the last 2 years).

International students wishing to apply to Queen’s University Belfast (and for whom English is not their first language), must be able to demonstrate their proficiency in English in order to benefit fully from their course of study or research. Non-EEA nationals must also satisfy UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) immigration requirements for English language for visa purposes.

For more information on English Language requirements for EEA and non-EEA nationals see: www.qub.ac.uk/EnglishLanguageReqs.