AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships (CDP) – CDP4 Cohort 2026/27. Call for HEI Partners/Academic Supervisors.
Research theme: Libraries, Literacy and Learning in Leeds
British Library Co-Supervisor:
Elvie Thompson (Lead Learning Producer North)
Context and summary
This collaborative studentship is a study of connections between space, place and cultural identity, and explores how these interact to impact local reading, writing and literature cultures in areas with a rich mixture of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, as well as high levels of poverty. It seeks to examine the following research questions:
- How do socio-economic, ethnic and cultural identities intersect to inform individuals’ and communities’ engagement with reading, writing and literature?
- How do these impact on children and young peoples’ literacy development?
- How might a better understanding of this inform effective library practices?
Leeds is at the centre of the British Library’s ongoing northern England programme, and represents a complex, intersectional environment. The average reading age is below the UK national average. 191 languages are spoken in Leeds schools. 35,000 children in Leeds (23% of the total) live in poverty, the highest level in 20 years. Over time, the population of children and young people is becoming more diverse and more focused in areas of poverty. The COVID pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities in the city, and there are now significant unfair differences in children’s communication and language development. Leeds is in the bottom 25% of UK local authorities for key stage one and two reading and writing outcomes, with outcomes lowest for children from global majority families and those living in poverty.
We are keen for Leeds to be an area of study, with potential for an in-depth case-study of Beeston and Holbeck, which is an area with a wide range of cultures, ethnicities and languages, and very high levels of poverty. Beeston and Holbeck falls within the 10% most deprived wards in the UK and is home to significant diaspora communities from South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe. The outcomes of this project are aimed to support librarianship, cultural policy and practice – providing strong evidence for how UK libraries can use a community-centred approach to support reading, writing and literature. It seeks to expand current research by considering library-sector interventions in disadvantaged, multicultural settings in the UK.
Research areas
The power and potential of volitional reading to support cognitive growth, academic attainment, and psychological wellbeing is well-documented, but global research shows a decline in the frequency and propensity of young people to pick up a book. There is a significant gap in current research around library practices and how these interact with and may impact the wider literacy infrastructure of home, school and community. Similarly, there is a wealth of global research on literacy in diverse communities, focusing on school or family-based practice. For instance, the effectiveness of using culturally familiar and relevant content and pedagogical practices in the classroom is well documented. The role of social capital affecting bilingual children’s language use in school has also been studied, and tension identified between schools’ efforts to build upon the children’s use of home language and the children’s reluctance to use it in a school setting, where the dominant institutional language is English, and where they would prefer to appear ‘like everyone else.’
There is an interesting field of research around intersectionality and literacy, which could be usefully extended to examine impact and inform library practice. We are interested in the technical challenges inherent in measuring literacy (e.g. its definition and the choice of criteria used to assess it) and seek to explore methods for doing this which are of practical use and value both for the library sector and the communities that we serve. As a unique piece of research, this project will provide an academic benchmark for broader research questions into community reading, writing and literature cultures, leading further work across the library and academic sectors.
A range of potential PhD projects would enable exploration of these themes, for example:
- The history of reading, writing and literature in multi-ethnic and socio-economically disadvantaged places, and the role of libraries and librarianship within this
- Exploring reading, writing and literature practices within diaspora communities, including non-English-language practices and their interaction with English language practices
- Focus on reading and writing around a particular form of literature, e.g. children’s literature
- Whether, how, why and why not people engage with their local and national libraries
- How children engage with the reading/writing materials they’re offered at school; how they read/write at home, and in what languages
- How library practices interact with wider educational and community reading, writing and literature practices
- How intersectionality theories can inform research and understanding of reading and writing cultures
- How national and local library provision might most effectively support local reading/writing cultures
The project engages with a range of ethical issues and will help create scholarship and policy strategies to address these within library practice. These include:
- Potential alienation of readers/writers from global majority backgrounds due to a lack of inclusivity and representation in the UK’s published output (and therefore library collections)
- Potential alienation of children and young people from global majority backgrounds from literacy education due to lack of inclusivity and representation in curriculum and exam syllabus texts
- Documented failings of the UK education and culture sectors to effectively support children and young people who grow up in poverty
This study could be undertaken by researchers in: History, Education, Cultural or Historical Geography, Library and Information Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, English and Comparative Literature. Beeston and Holback have high populations of people from South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, so students and supervisors with cultural knowledge from any of those parts of the world would be valuable, as would individuals with lived experience of economically disadvantaged areas.
Benefits and training opportunities for the CDP student
The Library has been working in Leeds (and in the Beeston and Holbeck Ward specifically) since 2025 and is on a journey to create a new venue in the south of the city. As the cultural keystone in a broader regeneration project, we want to ensure this process has real impact and brings deep and lasting improvements for local people. The potential of this project to shape both the shorter-term Learning and Participation programme and our new venue offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for research impact.
The student will benefit from our strong local relationships with community partners, schools, and with strategic local and national stakeholders, and Leeds Library Service, which will inform the direction of research and help identify sites for fieldwork. We would like to work with our academic partners to develop robust mechanisms to ensure voices from the community are heard throughout this project, for instance through the creation of a community advisory board or regular check-ins with identified stakeholders, as well as identify appropriate methods for sharing research findings and outputs.
They will also benefit from access to the expertise and wider networks of the Library’s Learning and Participation team. We will provide access to our community data sets from five years of strategy and delivery, including demographic data helping to understand populations, educational attainment and cultural engagement, as well as evaluations of past learning approaches.
There is potential for the student to engage with other teams at the Library including the Leeds Presence, Community Engagement and Culture Programmes teams, and with curatorial teams to support research into literature collections. They will be able to attend events, presentations and conferences to keep informed on developments in the library, literature and literacy sectors. This is a unique opportunity to understand the library sector from the inside. The skills developed during the project would be transferable to learning work in the fields of libraries, museums, galleries and archives.
Application deadline
Friday 28 November 2025, 5pm
Application guidance
Further information and details of how to apply.
Contact for queries
British Library Research Development Office – Postgraduate inbox
pgr@bl.uk
and
Elvie Thompson, Lead Learning Producer North
elvie.thompson@bl.uk