UCL Research Institute for Collections Fellowships

The Research Institute for Collections is offering four opportunities to visit UCL to conduct research on topics using the UCL holdings of archives, rare books, records and collections.

The successful candidates will spend up to six weeks for the Special Collections and Liberating the Collections Fellowship and up to ten weeks on the Prejudice in Power Fellowship, or the part-time equivalent, at UCL researching the collections. The Fellowship must be taken up between April and December 2024.

The aims of the Fellowships are to raise awareness of the collections amongst the research community, to facilitate new research into UCL Special Collections, Museums and Archives, and to disseminate the research outcomes to academic and non-academic audiences.

The Special Collections Visiting Fellow and Liberating the Collections Fellows will receive:

• A grant of £4,500 to cover travel, accommodation and living expenses
• Work space on the UCL Bloomsbury campus
• Mediated access to the collections
• Access to staff with specialist knowledge of the collection in question when available

The Prejudice in Power Fellow will receive:

• A grant of £7,000.
• Workspace on the UCL Bloomsbury campus. 
• Mediated access to the collections.
• Access to staff with specialist knowledge of the collection(s) in question when available.

The Visiting Fellows will be responsible for providing any additional equipment that they need to complete their project, such as laptops and software, themselves. Applicants should specify any additional resource requirements in their application.

Depending on the Fellowship applied for the Fellow will deliver a selection of the outputs below (see link for specific information)

• A research output in the form of a recorded lecture, a conference paper, a publication or a scholarly digital resource.
• A live public output during or after the Fellowship period, such as a talk, a seminar or a pop-up display.
• A blog post, an event recording, a podcast or another digital output that outlines the research project for the RIC website.
• An output of their choice in any format. This can include academic as well as creative outputs including, but not limited to, a community project or a piece of art or music. 
• Acknowledgement of the grant in any resulting publications.

UCL Special Collections

UCL Special Collections holds one of the foremost university collections of manuscripts, archives and rare books in the UK. They include fine collections of medieval manuscripts and early printed books as well as highly important 19th and 20th century collections of personal papers, archival material, and literature, covering a vast range of subject areas.

The core subject strengths of the collections are:

• Language, literature and poetry and 20th and 21st century small-press publishing
• Politics and social policy, especially 19th and 20th century reform movements
• History of science, especially medical sciences and genetics
• Mathematics
• History of the medieval and early modern book
• Latin American history and economics
• Hebraica and Judaica
• History of education, especially 20th century
• History of London, especially 19th and 20th century
• Speech sciences and conversational data

For details of our collections, please see:

Eligibility and Selection Criteria

The Liberating the Collections and Prejudice in Power Fellowships are open to all at any career stage. The Special Collections Fellowship is open to researchers external to UCL in any discipline at all levels from PhD onwards. Fellows need to ensure that they are eligible to work in the UK before making arrangements.

The Selection Committee will consider applications according to the following criteria:

• The demonstrated need to consult specific items or collections within UCL Special Collections. Preference will be given to proposals that relate to the core subject strengths of the collections
• The potential of the project to increase public understanding of the materials consulted, through publication or public dissemination, or to develop innovative research methods for the study of these materials
• The feasibility of the proposed research project

For more details and application forms please go to the apply button above.

The deadline for applications is 10am on 5 February 2024.