Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

History of Port Towns and Urban Cultures

The Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group was established to further our understanding of the social and cultural impact of ports on the urban hinterland from the eighteenth century to the modern period. In partnership with the National Museum of the Royal Navy, the research group are working on a range of projects that include sailors’ families, leisure, youth organisations, and maritime folklore in port towns.

PhD projects could include:

• Working in port towns: The lives and identities of seafarers on land; dockyard workers and those working in maritime trades; migration and minorities in port towns.
• Port town Cultures: Cultural traditions, popular leisure and folklore in port towns; crime and disorder; representations of port towns; myths and imagined port town communities.
• The structures and networks of and between port towns: Urban elites and civic cultures; imperial, trade, business and political systems.

See our website at www.port.ac.uk/porttowns