Other Significant Fellowships
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)
The Holland Visiting Fellowship was a transformative experience for me, as a researcher, and in terms of my own career development. It came at a crucial time, just as I had finished my PhD and my first postdoctoral teaching position. As a fellow at Durham I could pursue various threads of my second research project, using dedicated time in the Palace Green Library to understand how papers from their Sudan archives could be harnessed for my work on colonial South Asia. This time in the archive provided me with new theoretical perspectives that have shaped the funding applications I am...
Ellen Smith
Holland Visiting Fellowship (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
The Durham Residential Library Fellowships are a particularly good opportunity for independent researchers like me to keep up their research skills and maintain a research profile. During my Barker Visting Fellowship at Durham, I gave a paper on the monograph I had just published, took part in a ‘work in progress’ session, made connections with new colleagues with similar research interests, and reconnected with old friends based at Durham. The focus of my fellowship was the Grey papers in the Palace Green Library, in which I explored correspondence between Richard More O’Ferrall, the Irish Catholic governor of Malta between 1847...
Dr Aidan Enright
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Leeds Beckett, United Kingdom)
I was successful in obtaining a Barker Fellowship which allowed me to spend a month researching in the fantastic libraries attached to Durham University. A wonderful month of not just intense research but also I was made very welcome by staff and students and was able take full part in university life. A very rewarding experience.
Professor Jack Cunningham
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of Lincoln, United Kingdom)
The Durham Residential Research Library Fellowship offered a chance to work with the University’s wonderful collection of early books in a really supportive environment. Between the study spaces, the library and fellowship staff, and especially the cohort of fellows, the month in Durham didn’t just give space to think and write, but offered new connections and lasting friendships. The work I did there inspired new directions in my own research, and is now informing a larger project on the paratextual features of manuscripts and early printed books. This has been a real highlight in my academic career.
Jonathan Zecher
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Australian Catholic University, Australia)
During my Fellowship (4-28 July 2022) I carried out a research on the VIth century Gallic bishop Sidonius Apollinaris – a key figure in Late Antiquity, also in the light of the new great interest in his works and within the International project SAxii – Sidonius Apollinaris for the XXIst century (www.sidonapol.org) –, having the chance to consult, right through the original documents, some of the first modern commentaries on him, available at Durham historic collections, at Palace Green Library and at Ushaw College: the XVI-XVIIth century editions by Jean Savaron (magistrate and humanist) and by Jacques Sirmond (Jesuit scholar)....
Filomena Giannotti
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of Sienna, Italy)
My time in Durham as a researcher under the Research Fellowship scheme was both congenial and very fruitful. It provided me with access to significant and essential materials that facilitated my project in transformative ways. The library and archives staff were exemplary in their welcome and generous assistance. Living in Durham for one month was also a most pleasant experience. My thanks to all who support the scheme and I commend it to any who are considering making an application.
Rev Dr Robert Fennell
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Atlantic School of Theology in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)
'The opportunity to work intensively with the manuscript treasures of Durham special collections was invaluable. The collegial and friendly atmosphere generated in the cohort of fellows was an added bonus!'
Professor Gordon Pentland
Barker Visiting Fellowship (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
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 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)