IASH – Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Heritage Collections Research Fellowships, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK. Deadline: 25 April 2025.

Applications are invited for Heritage Collections Research Fellowships (previously known as Library Fellowships) from postdoctoral scholars in any area of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, to carry out research based on any of the Heritage Collections held at the University of Edinburgh in 2025-26.

The University’s collections include archives, manuscripts, rare books, art, musical instruments and other museum collections representing four centuries of collecting, and occupying 100km of shelving. They are managed by a multi-disciplinary team of curators within the Centre for Research Collections (CRC). The collections offer almost limitless possibilities for research across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. The Fellowships offer privileged access to the collections and curatorial team, enabling forms of collections-based research which are difficult to accomplish through ordinary reading room services. The Fellows are expected to be correspondingly engaged with the CRC, contributing to projects or events as appropriate.

They particularly welcome applications linked to the themes of the Institute Project on Decoloniality which took place at IASH from 2021 to 2024. Among other areas, this would include:

Identities and Inequalities

The CRC collections offer a range of objects and materials which explore or illustrate the intertwined concepts of identity and inequality. There is significant research potential not only in collection material and objects, but also in the records connected to the infrastructures and individuals related to the collections’ histories.

International Connections: Focus on Africa

There is a wealth of material within the collections which either originates in Africa, or records relationships between Scotland and Africa. It offers huge research potential, but much of it has been little explored.

Postdocs and Early Career Fellowships: Making a Nation, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. Deadline: 25 April 2025.

IASH is pleased to offer a range of postdoctoral and early-career Fellowships for recent graduates. Closing dates for application are late February and late April each year for visits in the following academic year. The theme for 2025-26 will be Making A Nation. This will be a year-long exploration of independence and nation-making, culminating in the 250th anniversary of the ratification of the US Declaration of Independence on 4 July 2026.

The theme of nation-building raises deeper, more critical questions about the nature of legitimacy and the politics of identity: for whom and by whom nationhood is claimed. It also raises questions of land use and (dis)possession and the intricate relationship between territoriality and (de)coloniality. In a world beset by conflict, what might we learn from past examples of nation-making that enable a more positive and just vision of what it means to belong?

It is important to note that they still welcome applications on all topics and in all areas of the arts, humanities and social sciences to continue IASH’s traditional interdisciplinary work across CAHSS schools, alongside Making A Nation.