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 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 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)
Durham University’s Residential Research Fellowship was a delightful experience. For part of a new book I’m writing on the history of empires and resistance, I used the Sudan Collection, arguably the most important archive of the British Empire in the Sudan. It is an amazing collection. I highly recommend this fellowship program, which brings together different scholars and offers them a rare sense of community in one of England’s most beautiful university settings. It’s world-class, and I want to return!
James Le Sueur
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of Nebraska, USA)
My month spent in Durham was incredibly rewarding. In addition to having time and resources to complete a major book project about John the Baptist, it was also incredible to investigate the rare books and manuscripts related to this topic that are to be found across the university’s, Ushaw College’s, and the Cathedral’s collections. I was also able to consult the books and papers of my doctoral supervisor when I was a student at Durham University, Prof. James D. G. Dunn, allowing me to complete an essay that he left unfinished when he died.
Dr James McGrath
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Butler University Indianapolis, USA)
As I had always intended to follow up with an English ‘Book of Colours’ whose terminology I had already discussed with Durham’s pre-eminent scholar of medieval manuscripts Richard Gameson during previous visits I was delighted to learn about the Library and Collections Visiting Fellowship programme. Thus, seconded by Richard and his ‘Team Pigment’, I set out with the first English translation of the ‘Master Bernard’ while juxtaposing its content with contemporary book painting practises on the isle – as described and analysed in the 2023 ‘Pigments of British Medieval Illuminators’ (ed. by Gameson and Suzanne Reynolds of the Fitzwilliam Museum,...
Thomas Reiser
Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship (Independent Scholar, formerly Technical University of Munich, Germany)
The Durham Residential Library Fellowship has been a great opportunity to advance in my research. Not only has it made possible to work on research materials at Palace Green and Ushaw College, but it has also got me in touch with other researchers working on similar topics. As an earlymodernist and a scholar of the manuscript and printed dissemination of texts between Spain and England and their usage through the ages, having access to the rich collections in Durham libraries has meant a fantastic opportunity to study materials that are unique. I also value the opportunity this has given me...
Ana Saez Hidalgo
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain)
I am deeply grateful for the amazing research opportunities offered me by the University of Durham and made possible by the Lendrum Visiting Fellowship. I have profited from the time spent in Durham in multiple ways. First and foremost, the access to the precious and vast library resources enabled me to progress with my research plans in a manner that would have been impossible otherwise. The Palace Green Library, where I spent most of my time is located in the historical and heritage centre of Durham and one could not imagine a better place to read and analyse medieval and...
Dr Kinga Lis
Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
At Durham, Vanessa consulted Seventeenth and Eighteenth-century oeuvres from the Ushaw and Palace Green libraries on mystical theology and instructions for religious rituals to explore the understanding and rationalization of occult practices at a time of global Counter–reformation. Two of the most influential works in her search were Martín Antoine Del Rio, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex, quibus continentur accurata curiosarum artium, et vanarum superstitionum confutatio, vtilis theologis, iurisconsultis, medicis, philologis (Moguntiae: Sumptibus Petri Henningii, 1624); and Giovanni Bonna's Rerum liturgicarum libri duo (Augustae Taurinorum: Ex Typographia Regia, 1747). Some of the findings of this research were presented at the ‘Conferencia...
Vanessa Portugal
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University College London, 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)
I was awarded the Durham Research Library Fellowship in 2022 for two months (May and June). It was a very rewarding time. The kindness of the staff and the helpfulness of the librarians, who always made me feel at home, allowed me to carry on my research fruitfully at Ushaw College Library. Durham is also a vibrant university town and the Durham Research Library Fellowship provides many opportunities for academic networking and exchange with other Fellows.
Valfredo Maria Rossi
Holland Visiting Fellowship (Georgian University, Italy)