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
I was awarded the Durham Research fellowships twice, in 2017 and in 2019. Both times I had a first-class experience as I could enjoy an excellent staff which helped me from the organization of my journey to my stay in Durham. The archival resources at Ushaw College are outstanding and I could see and collect all the material with ease. I also enjoyed the conferences and seminars organized by the department of history as I learned so much in such a short time. Overall, it has been a wonderful research experience and I’m looking forward to coming back!
Matt Binasco
Holland Visiting Fellowship (Università per Stranieri di Siena, Italy)
“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)
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)
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)
This Research Fellowship gave me the opportunity to immerse myself into the The Cremation Society Archives held at Palace Green Library. It was a special opportunity not only because I was able to study original material from the collection, but also because it was my first time I was back into a libary since the COVID pandemic. Only then I realised I much I missed seeing and feeling original documents but also connect with other scholars on the Fellowship programme.
Gian Luca Amadei
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Royal College of Art, Italy)
I had a particularly productive time in Durham, during which I carried out research in the Ushaw College, Cathedral, and University Libraries. This was made possible by the generous assistance of staff at each of these locations, who were swift to understand and accommodate the needs of readers. During my time in Durham, I was fortunate to organise an international conference in collaboration with the Classics Department, for which the beautiful surroundings of the city provided the perfect backdrop.
Simon Smets
Holland Visiting Fellowship (PhD University College London/Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Austira, Austria)
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)
I was most grateful to receive a Holland Visiting Fellowship in the Spring of 2020. The research facilities it offered were just what I needed, giving me space and time to work undistractedly on a long projected study of Bishop Christopher Butler, whose family papers are in Durham University Library’s Special Collections, and bring it to near completion. I am expecting the Weldon Press to publish the study in late Spring or Summer this year.
Peter Phillips
Holland Visiting Fellowship
My Durham Research Library Fellowship in 2019 was immensely enjoyable and productive. It was a pleasure to spend my time engaging with primary sources and writing after a long period spent in administration. All the team at Durham were very supportive and made the logistics of the fellowship easy, and Durham was a wonderful place to spend four a half with my wife. This was a very productive time and I am greatly indebted to Durham for the fellowship.
David Trim
DRRL Visiting Fellowship (Seventh Day Adventists, USA)
My experience in Durham as the holder of a Barker Visiting Fellowship was stunning. As an historian of the long (perhaps too long?) 18th century, spending a month exploring the vast personal archives of the 2nd and 3rd Earl Grey and of the 1st Earl of Durham was a splendid opportunity. I am currently working on the Duke of Wellington as interim Prime Minister after the dismissal of Melbourne’s government in 1834: my research will benefit largely from my work on the Grey and Lambton papers. The staff at the Special Collections was wonderful: always ready to go the extra...
Ugo Bruschi
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of Bologna, Italy)