Fellows Around the World
The Durham Collections Fellowship programme has transformed from a regional initiative into a truly global network.
Our partnerships now span six continents, connecting scholars and cultural heritage professionals across more than 26 countries and supporting over 128 international fellows.
This growth has enabled groundbreaking collaborative projects, from digitisation initiatives in South Asia to manuscript preservation in Africa. Fellows return to their home institutions as ambassadors for innovative heritage practices, creating lasting impact that extends far beyond individual fellowships.
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Over 100 fellows
"The Residential Research Fellowship at Durham University provided me with vital, extended access to important collections that uncovered, and helped explain how and why, Catholic kin networks engaged in settler colonialism and the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved people in a bid to secure their own safety from anti-Catholic legislation. The collections proved that these networks were vast, global, and connected to theological and cultural change brought about by the Catholic Reformation as much by Protestant ones. Most importantly, the advice that I received from staff at Durham and Ushaw College with expert familiarity with these collections meant that I developed...
Dr Helen Kilburn
DRRL Visiting Fellowship (University of Manchester, England)
I was delighted to be awarded a Lendrum Fellowship to work at the Durham Residential Research Library and to be part of the fantastic research community around these collections. My research would not have been possible without the fellowship, because the books I am working with are specific to Durham Cathedral in the sixteenth century, and offer important clues about what happened there during the Reformation. Durham is enormously fortunate in its collections because such a large proportion of its pre-Reformation books stayed in the region, whether in the Cathedral collections or gathered into the library at Ushaw, and it...
Elizabeth Biggs
Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship (University of York, England)
The Barker Visiting Fellowship was an extraordinary human and professional opportunity for at least three reasons. Firstly, the fellowship allowed me to profitably pursue my studies on Benedictine figurative culture between the 16th and 19th centuries. More specifically, the collections of the Palace Green Library, the documents preserved at Ushaw College and the paintings kept in the castle (especially those from the 17th and 18th centuries) were very relevant in this regard. Secondly, my stay in Durham offered me the opportunity to closely examine the conspicuous artistic heritage housed in the county's museum network, giving me the chance to make...
Mauro Vincenzo Fontana
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy)
I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Barkers fellowship, to all the friendly and helpful librarians at the Palace Green, Bill Bryson and Ushaw libraries, to Professors James Kelly and Bennett Zon and to Barbara Jackson for the wonderful and inspiring research stay in Durham. Reading the 19th century letters and rare books has enabled me to gain a clearer picture of the intricacies of the history, culture and politics in Central Asia. The talks my fellow researchers gave at IAS and subsequent discussions were very inspiring for my work. It was a great opportunity to network...
Maria Rybakova
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan)
During my time at Durham University, I have surveyed and studied various South Asian bows and arrows preserved at Oriental Museum. Besides, the study of bows and arrows I have also explored many photographs/images of archers and archery preserved at Palace Green Library that helped me to shape my understanding towards the high skills used to manufacture oriental bows and arrows and also the use of specialized training in archery. Further, the holdings of rare manuscripts and books pertaining to bow-making and archery at Durham Cathedral and Bill Bryson Library enhanced my knowledge in the field of bow-making and the...
Dr Syed Ashraf
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Department of Delhi Archives, New Dehli)
“I am an historian of medieval philosophy who was awarded a Lord Crewe Fellowship to work on the topic of theology as a science in Durand of St. Pourçain’s commentary on the Sentences. The subject seems obscure, but it is of great historical importance because it was out of debates over whether theology counts as an Aristotelian demonstrative science that developments in epistemology and cognitive psychology took place in the fourteenth century that would lay the foundations for the modern scientific method. The volume on which I was working is housed in the Bamburgh Rare Books Library at Durham, which...
Peter Eardley
Lord Crewe Visiting Fellowship (University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada)
The Barker Fellowship was invaluable because it enabled me to continue my research during a period when I was without other institutional funding. The material that consulted in Durham’s collections — about early modern market toll disputes, and grain toll disputes in particular — illuminated neglected aspects of the socio-economic history of the northeast and added new dimensions to my thinking about the dynamics that operated in similar disputes elsewhere in England.
Hillary Taylor
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of Cambridge, England)
The Barker Fellowship provided by Durham enabled me to take the time to really explore the Sudan Archive – a great privilege, for which I am exceedingly grateful, and something I had wanted to do since beginning my Doctorate research 14 years ago. I focussed specifically on the archive’s incredible documentation of the coral block Islamic Red Sea style architecture of the historic port town of Suakin, Sudan. Unfortunately, Suakin’s historic structures have decayed and mostly disappeared, and now can only be seen – at least in any relatively intact state - through historic documentation. Yet, the few surviving buildings...
Kate Ashley
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Independent Scholar, United Kingdom)
A productive month of research in historic Durham in a collegial environment with scholars whose work informs your own – it doesn’t get better than that!
Carmen Mangion
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of London, England)
The Barker Fellowship at Durham University provided an invaluable space for advancing my research within a dynamic and collegial intellectual community. Following my work on the history of sexual violence, I became increasingly interested in how it intersects with other forms of discrimination—sexual and gender-based, racial, and social—within religious contexts. This led me to explore religious women’s movements and their role in the fight against sexual violence and gender discrimination. During my time at Durham, I deepened my research on the Catholic Women's League of England, which has a particularly rich history in this respect, and its connections with other...
Agnes Desmazieres
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Centre Sèvres-Facultés jésuites de Paris, French)