The British Academy has awarded £3.5million in Mid-Career Fellowships to 30 outstanding academics whose research will contribute towards public understanding of the humanities and social sciences.

Among the 30 academics is Dr Claudia Glatz, a senior lecturer in archaeology who is based in the College of Arts' School of Humanities | Sgoil nan Daonnachdan.

Mid-Career Fellowships, worth on average £116,000 for a period of 6-12 months, are designed both to support talented individual researchers with excellent research proposals, and to promote public understanding of – and engagement with – subjects in the humanities and social sciences.

The scheme allows academics time to focus on a major piece of research by obtaining time away from teaching and administration commitments. In previous years, the work undertaken by British Academy Mid-Career Fellows has led to critically-acclaimed books, big-budget European documentaries and BBC radio shows.

Welcoming the new Mid-Career Fellows, President of the British Academy Sir David Cannadine, said: “I am delighted to welcome this group of exceptional scholars to the British Academy. The research funded under the Mid-Career Fellowships scheme is always fascinating, engaging and relevant, and this year’s projects are no exception.

“Whether examining how blockchain technology could lead to safer bailouts for banks, or analysing the effectiveness of anti-Semitism prevention programmes, our new Mid-Career Fellows will help tackle some of the most pressing national and international challenges, while furthering public understanding of, and interest in, the humanities and social sciences.

“We wish the Mid-Career Fellows every success and look forward to seeing the results of their work.”

Dr Glatz's project is called "The Invention of Civilisation: Early Highland-lowland Encounters and the Politics of Alterity" and has been awarded just over £116,600 by the British Academy. The project will investigate the invention of civilisation and its opposites in the past and today. It does so through a three-pronged approach to highland-lowland relationships: the contrast between 'highland' and 'lowland' in many past cultural contexts provided the mythico-geographical space for the creation of sameness and alterity critical for political formation. The project focuses on Mesopotamia’s relationship with the Zagros and Taurus mountains (c. 3500-500 BCE) and draws on a series of comparable encounters in early Anatolia, China and the Andes.

Dr Glatz said: "I am delighted to receive a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for my project ‘The Invention of Civilisation: Early Highland-lowland Encounters and the Politics of Alterity’. The Fellowship will allow me to synthesize a decade of archaeological research in Turkey and Iraq on the relationships that developed between the first states and communities located in highland and transitional landscapes, the imagination and representations of cultural distinction that this entailed, and the impact it has had on political and scholarly narratives and practices in the past as well as in the present."

The awards provide opportunities for scholars who have already established a significant track record as an excellent communicator and ‘champion’ in their field, and who are normally within no more than 15 years from the award of their doctorate.

To be eligible, Mid-Career Fellows are required to demonstrate a commitment to public engagement and to communicate their project to a broad audience.

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First published: 10 May 2019