What are the fellowships?

The Durham Collections Fellowships scheme is delighted to invite applications from researchers for Visiting Fellowships of one month in duration.

The aim of the Durham Collections Fellowships is to enable and foster research across the historic collections of Durham, notably Palace Green Library, the Museum of Archaeology, the Oriental Museum, the Library of Ushaw Historic House, Chapels and Gardens (formerly Ushaw College, the former Roman Catholic seminary just outside the City), and the medieval Priory Library and the archives and object collections of Durham Cathedral.

The resources available to scholars include not only libraries and archives, but also collections of visual and material culture, and architectural assets. The purpose of the Visiting Fellowships is to support research into these globally significant collections.

Durham University would like to express our sincere thanks to Graham and Joanna Barker, Chris and Margaret Lendrum, and Peter and Tina Holland, for their generous support of fellowship schemes at Durham Collections Fellowships.

 

We also extend our  gratitude to Lord Crewe's Charity, the Great British Sasakawa Foundation and the Sino-British Fellowship Trust for their generous contributions.

Named fellowships

The Barker Visiting Fellowships are intended to support research into any of the collections held in Durham, while the Lendrum Priory Library Fellowships support work on the surviving contents of Durham Cathedral’s medieval priory library.  This collection is currently the focus of a large-scale digitisation project, Durham Priory Library Recreated www.durhampriory.ac.uk.

The Lendrum Fellowships are intended to support research into any of the collections but there is a preference for applicants wishing to use the historic book collections of Durham. This is interpreted broadly to include consultation of individual books, study of specific collections, research into the material forms of books, histories of book circulation and collecting, plus consideration of the readers of books. We welcome applications from both academic and practitioner researchers at all stages in their career.

The Lord Crewe’s Charity Fellowships are open to any applicant wishing to work on the Bamburgh Library Collection. The remit is wide, from those wishing to research it as a collection, to those planning to consult an individual item, and also includes the material culture of the books.

We are pleased to include in this programme, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Fellowship, which is to support applicants based in Japan to come to Durham to work on any of the collections.

This year, we are also delighted to announce the Sino-British Fellowship Trust Visiting Fellowships which are intended to support research into any of the collections, and are reserved specifically for those based at Chinese institutions. We welcome applications from both academic and practitioner researchers at all stages in their career

Fellows will be encouraged to work collaboratively with academic subject specialists, librarians, archivists and curators to realise the collections’ research potential, and to develop innovative research agendas. They will also be encouraged to participate in the life of the University, particularly its broad range of seminar series.

All Fellowships

Holland Visiting Fellowship

26 Fellows

Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship

17 Fellows

Barker Visiting Fellowship

57 Fellows

DRRL Visiting Fellowship

23 Fellows

PhD Bursary

4 Fellows

Thoits Visiting Fellowship

1 Fellow

Lendrum Visiting Fellowship

3 Fellows

Sasakawa Visiting Fellowship

1 Fellow

Lord Crewe Visiting Fellowship

2 Fellows

Sino British Fellowship

1 Fellow

Lord Crewe PhD Fellowship

0 Fellows

Other research fellowships

The Spanish Gallery Collection research fellowships

Two fellowships are available to undertake research into the collection of the Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland.

The fellowships are affiliated with the Zurbarán Centre and Durham Collections Fellowships. Generously funded by the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica (CEEH), each fellowship includes a monthly stipend of £2,100. An allowance for research-related travel will be available on request. The fellows will be part of the University‘s research community and have privileged access to the Spanish Gallery.

Find out more information and apply

The Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship at Durham University was an exceptionally rewarding experience in every respect. The fellowship provided outstanding conditions for focused research, combined with an intellectually stimulating and genuinely academic environment. Access to outstanding library and special collections, together with the professionalism and generosity of staff and colleagues, greatly enhanced the quality and scope of the work undertaken. Equally valuable was the opportunity to engage fully with the wider academic and collegiate life of Durham, which enriched the fellowship well beyond the strictly research-based dimension. I am deeply grateful for the support received and very much hope to...
Georgina Olivetto
Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship (University of Salamanca, Italian)
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)
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)
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)
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)
I am deeply grateful for my Lendrum Book Fellowship, which has offered me a truly transformative research experience. The expansive time and space offered by the Fellowship has enabled me both to pursue my planned archival project in depth, and to discover new and unexpected pathways for the future. This will lead to several outputs and, I hope, some future projects and collaborations related to early books and manuscripts at Durham Cathedral and Durham University. My heartfelt thanks to the Lendrums for their generosity.
Mary Ann Lund
Lendrum Visiting Fellowship (University of Leicester, UK)
While a Visiting Fellow at the DRRL I worked on two early modern topics relating to central and eastern Europe. I was able to study the English reception of the works of an Augsburg-born Jesuit, the different editions of the translation being available at Ushaw. I was also able to consult the collections in Durham Cathedral Library to explore the life of a chaplain to King Charles I, who was active in Transylvania in the mid-seventeenth century. The collection includes Hungarian-language original documents, testifying to the global reach of the collections in Durham. The whole research experience was hugely enjoyable,...
Dr Toth Zsombor
DRRL Visiting Fellowship (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary)
The Barker Visiting Fellowship allowed me to become a temporary member of the vibrant community of Durham University and to extend my network with UK scholars that I am sure will bring fruitful cooperation in the future. From the scientific perspective, it permitted me to boost my progress on my project provisionally titled Uranian Poetics: Girolamo Fracastoro and the Tradition of Medical Scientific Poetry. The core of my activity consisted of the consultation of manuscripts and old printed editions preserved by the Palace Green Library, particularly the texts from the Kellet Collection and the Magby Library. Among the material that...
Enrico Piergiacomi
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Technion University of Haifa (Israel)., Israel)
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)
I was pleased to be awarded a DRRL Visiting Fellowship to undertake research on Sir John Marshall ‘s one-hundred-year-old photographic collection now preserved at the Oriental Museum. The Fellowship provided me with an excellent opportunity to understand the provenance of Buddhist sculptures preserved in Peshawar Museum Collection (Pakistan) and to compare the sculptures with others at important Buddhist sites in the Gandhara region and across the Indus in Taxila Valley. I was also able to study the present state of conservation of some of the objects now preserved in the different museums of Pakistan thanks to this photographic collection, as...
Tahir Saeed
DRRL Visiting Fellowship (Department of Archaeology and Museums, Islamabad)