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.

Named fellowships

The Barker Visiting Fellowships

The Barker Visiting Fellowships are intended to support research into any of the collections held in Durham and there are a number of Lendrum Priory Library Fellowships available specifically to support work on the surviving contents of Durham Cathedral ‘s medieval priory library.

This collection has been the focus of a large-scale digitisation project, Durham Priory Library Recreated.

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

25 Fellows

Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship

17 Fellows

Barker Visiting Fellowship

49 Fellows

DRRL Visiting Fellowship

22 Fellows

PhD Bursary

4 Fellows

Thoits Visiting Fellowship

1 Fellow

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

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 well as those held at Palace Green Library and at Ushaw. The Fellowship provided me with an excellent opportunity to discuss a number of new research initiatives for the protection of cultural heritage with several researchers at Durham University. Throughout, my research was actively supported by museum staff, librarians and archivists, and I am grateful for this support.
Tahir Saeed
DRRL Visiting Fellowship (Department of Archaeology and Museums, Islamabad)
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 currently making and broad outlines of my research I am constructing, as I move forward with the next stages of my research. The Durham community were also incredibly welcoming and generous with their time in integrating me into their research culture. In History, academics and postgraduate researchers invited me to meetings and events to discuss my research and learn about work taking place in the department. Other departments extended me the same privilege. I was able to attend papers given by the South Asia Forum and the Pedagogies of Dispossession research network and learn about life in the Durham colleges, which I valued as a chance to think about Durham as a site for further research. Thank you once again to the funders, the Durham Collections Fellowships committee, and Durham University itself for this terrific opportunity.
Ellen Smith
Holland Visiting Fellowship (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)
"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 a deeper and more nuanced understanding of their provenance, and the context in which the material in the archive was produced. This would have been impossible without a lengthy stay in Durham funded by the fellowship, and I want to extend my thanks to all who helped establish it, and the staff at Palace Green and Ushaw College who lent me their support, especially Dr Jonathan Bush."
Dr Helen Kilburn
DRRL Visiting Fellowship (University of Manchester, England)
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)
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 early modern manuscripts. In this most stimulating environment I managed to consult 17 manuscripts containing texts of diverse genres, the majority of which I had the time to transcribe (certainly, only the necessary samples from them) and edit for the purposes of the upcoming linguistic analysis. For the rest of them I have gained permission to photograph selected folios. This was an extraordinary opportunity as all manuscripts are works of art and the collections held in Durham are unique both in their scope and the type of holdings. As I learnt to navigate my way through the catalogues, I discovered still further works which I wanted to consult and this inadvertently extended my initial research plan to encompass works of still different genres. On top of that, the extensive resources of all Durham libraries offer an unparalleled selection of reference titles available to researchers at any moment. This is something that might sound trivial to people accustomed to such comforts, but for someone as myself, coming from a University without such resources, this felt like coming to a Promised Land (and never wanting to leave it). As a Visiting Fellow I was also invited to the meetings of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, from which I benefitted immensely, getting to know scholars working with manuscripts from very different perspectives (chemists, physicists, palaeographers, book historians, literary researchers, translators). This instigated most interesting conversations, giving me ideas for new avenues of research. A stimulating exchange of ideas also occurred in conversations with other Visiting Fellows, for whose company and expertise I am also very grateful. The kindness of all the people working at different Durham libraries and University made navigating the new reality absolutely straightforward and problem-free, making me feel invited to partake in the different events on offer in Durham. Quite aside from the scholarly endeavours, my visit in Durham was also a unique opportunity to experience life in this city and interact with its inhabitants not from a position of someone who needs to leave in a day or two but rather of someone who is at leisure of taking the time to appreciate these things. The fact that the Palace Green Library did close in the afternoon, forcing everyone to venture, frequently quite unwillingly, outside its walls, and due to some days on which it was closed altogether, encouraged me and other November fellows to plan some time away from library resources and work. This was the time I, despite myself, thoroughly enjoyed, visiting the city and its monuments but also travelling to not-so-distant places such as Newcastle, Jarrow, Monkwearmouth, Leeds or York and immersing myself in their history which I only knew from books and could now experience myself.
Dr Kinga Lis
Lendrum Priory Visiting Fellowship (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
'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)
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)
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)
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)
Barbara Jones Denison is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Shippensburg University, where she was the director of the interdisciplinary Organizational Development and Leadership graduate program, department chair of Sociology and Anthropology, and director of the undergraduate online degree completion program. With a 1985 PhD in sociology from Northwestern University, Denison has worked professionally within sociology as well as a number of interdisciplinary contexts. She recently published “Giving Up the Good for the Better: Dorothy Day’s Ethic of Direct Action” in A Research Agenda for Organizational Ethics (2023). Having been active in a number of international, national, and regional sociology and leadership studies organizations, she is the incoming president-elect of the North Central Sociological Association for 2024. She continues her research on the intersectionality of leadership and gender in re-examining the contemporary imaging of lessons from historical religious women, and is currently examining Joseph Lightfoot’s late 19th c. ideas on diaconesses as leaders in the context of assessing a typology for understanding the role of gender in women’s religious leadership..
Barbara Denison
Barker Visiting Fellowship (Shippensburg University, USA)