University of Glasgow Library Announces Distinguished Research Fellows for 2025
Published: 19 February 2025
A total of 13 new scholars who have been awarded Visiting Research Fellowships to carry out research using its unique collections by UofG Library.
The University of Glasgow Library has announced 13 new scholars who have been awarded Visiting Research Fellowships to carry out research using its unique collections.
The new fellows are drawn from a broad range of academic disciplines and research interests from the UK, China, USA and Canada.
The range of topics they will be investigating includes the 200th anniversary of braille and early Scottish bookmaking by Glasgow Asylum for the Blind; Scottish Poet Edwin Morgan in translation; Mary Queen of Scots as well as the role of women in the development of early photography.
The fellowships are supported by the library in partnership with the Friends of Glasgow University Library and the William Lind Foundation.
Siobhan Convery, Director of Library Collections, said: “The Library’s collections are an outstanding research asset for many disciplines and that is reflected in the diversity of fellowships we are supporting. But these awards are also about bringing scholars from around the world to Glasgow’s vibrant research environment. We look forward to welcoming the fellows throughout 2025.”
Glasgow is proud to have an outstanding library of old, rare and unique material, including many illuminated medieval and renaissance manuscripts of international importance, and more than 10,000 books printed before 1601.
It also houses extensive collections relating to art, literature and the performing arts, as well as the University’s own institutional archive which dates back to the 13th century. It is also home to the Scottish Business Archive, with over 400 collections dating from the 18th century to the modern day.
The Fellowships are competitive peer-assessed awards. They are designed to provide financial support towards the costs of travel and accommodation to enable researchers to work on the unique collections held in the University Library. The successful recipients should spend between two and four weeks over the course of a year working with the collections in Glasgow.
The Fellowships offered by The William Lind Foundation are to support research into Scottish business history, otherwise, the scope of proposals is open to applicants to define. The fellows were chosen by a panel of including Siobhan Convery, Director, Library Collections and UofG academics including the Professor Dauvit Broun, Professor Lorna Hughes, Dr Kathryn Lowe, Professor Andrew Mackillop, Professor Kirsteen McCue, Dr Gavin Miller, Dr Geraldine Parsons and Professor Neil Rollings
Full list of fellowships
Dr Caroline Douglas is an artist and historian of early photography. She will investigate the crucial yet overlooked role of women in the development of photography in Scotland. Her research focuses on the chemical networks of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Scotland that were fundamental to photography's official invention in 1839.
Professor Rebecca Ruth Gould from The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London will examine the university's extensive holdings related to Mary, Queen of Scots. Her research will contribute to her upcoming book "Sex and the State: Marriage and the Origins of Gender Inequality," examining how Mary's story reflects broader patterns of gender inequality and power dynamics.
Yagmur Gunduz, a PhD researcher from the Henley Business School, University of Reading, has been awarded her fellowship to study the evolution of British retail business. Her research focuses on the strategic development of the mass fashion industry in 20th century Britain, with particular emphasis on the House of Fraser's corporate archives held by the University of Glasgow.
Taylor Hare is a Postdoctoral Fellow in English at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, USA. His research focuses on the history of reading by touch. His fellowship will investigate the history of raised-letter printing at the Glasgow Asylum for the Blind for his Blindness and Bookmaking project to help recover the stories of this group of disabled bookmakers.
Professor Kevin James, the Scottish Studies Foundation Chair at the University of Guelph, will explore the history of Glasgow’s City Business Club from 1912 to its dissolution in 1964. The Club advocated for the interests of commerce and industry in the city. Charitable activity in the wake of World War I, such as its leadership of the annual Poppy Day Appeal, and efforts to find positions for former enlisted men, became vehicles through which the Club projected a civic philanthropic presence.
Professor Li (Daisy) Li, of the Faculty of Languages and Translation, Macao Polytechnic University (MPU) in Macao SAR, China. Her research interests include children’s literature, Translation Studies, Digital Humanities and Scottish Literature. Her fellowship will focus on the Edwin Morgan’s time in the Middle East and his ttranslations of Portuguese-language writers such as Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, and Pedro Xisto.
Professor Steven J Livesey, the Brian E and Sandra O’Brien Presidential Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at the University of Oklahoma, will focus on two central texts of the medieval Latin medical tradition, Gilles of Corbeil’s Versus de urinis and Versus de pulsibus. His project involves examining three early manuscripts of these texts held by Glasgow to better understand their textual variations, the contexts in which they circulated, and the manuscripts’ construction and provenance.
Dr Jodie Marley is researching the Scott family - engraver Robert Scott and his sons, artist-authors David and William Bell Scott - as part of her project The Scott Family and Edinburgh Romanticism. Dr Marley will be examining key archival materials at Glasgow, particularly those related to David Scott’s illustrations for JP Nichol’s The Architecture of the Heavens. This project aims to highlight the Scott family’s contributions to Scottish Romanticism and the intellectual culture of the time.
Dr Rebekah McCallum, an independent scholar, is expanding her research on the influence of international tea companies on labour policy in India and Sri Lanka. Dr McCallum will be examining how James Finlay & Co and other colonial companies shaped industry-wide labour practices, policies, and management in response to labour unrest, anti-colonial movements, and global economic changes.
David Morgan-Owen is a Reader in the History of War at King’s College London. His project examines how the seas and oceans underpinned British strategy in the First World War. Hitherto, historians have been concerned to ask whether the sea played an important role in securing victory in 1918, debating how great or small such a role was. This project proceeds from an alternative assumption: that the sea was the foundation of how Britain made war, and that the maritime world was integral to the imperial state’s mobilisation of economic and military power.
Emma Nuding, Research Associate at the University of York, will use her fellowship at to explore the place-based reception of the Middle English alliterative verse text The Destruction of Troy. She will focus on its only surviving manuscript at Glasgow and explore how it was understood by readers in the Northwest of England. This project builds on her previous research into how medieval texts were received over time, including her upcoming book about St. Guthlac of Crowland.
Holly Swenson, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, USA, is researching the expansion of British children's literature in the British world. She will examine archives from two publishers, William Collins, Sons & Co and Blackie & Son, Ltd, to explore how they expanded into children’s literature and their operations in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Her research will focus on how these firms viewed the children’s book market as a growth opportunity.
Xinyi Wen, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, is studying the history of medicine, specifically a belief that plants resembling parts of the human body could treat related health problems. During her fellowship at Glasgow, she will focus on the Scottish doctor William Cullen, who argued against this idea but still used a treatment based on it. Xinyi’s research will explore how Cullen's views on medicine reflect the changing ideas of science during the Scottish Enlightenment.
First published: 19 February 2025