University news

The University of Glasgow Library has named 13 scholars, including a Turner Prize winner, awarded a visiting fellowship to carry out research using its unique collections.

The fellowships are supported by the Library in partnership with the Friends of Glasgow University Library and the William Lind Foundation.

Artist Elizabeth Price, who was awarded the 2012 Turner Prize for her video installation The Woolworths Choir of 1979, intends to use the fellowship to look at the archives of Stoddard-Templeton of Glasgow, once the world’s pre-eminent carpet designers and manufacturers.

Ms Price, who created short videos which explore the social and political histories of artefacts, architectures and documents, said: “I’m hoping to explore the social and technical history of carpet production, uncovering the technologies involved, with a view to creating a carpet as an artwork.”

Carpets designed and manufactured by Stoddard-Templeton were exported to all four corners of the globe, with major commissions for parliaments, concert halls and cultural institutions including the White House, Westminster and the Titanic.

The other successful scholars will be working on a diverse range of projects from Scottish wool manufacturing to Paisley shawls as well as Clyde shipbuilding to antiquarian books and collections.

Siobhan Convery, Assistant Director in the Library, 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 2020.”

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, worth up to £2000 each, 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 will spend between two and four weeks over the course of a year working with the collections in Glasgow.

Six of the fellowships are offered by the William Lind Foundation to support research into Scottish business history, otherwise the scope of proposals was open to applicants to define.

 

The Full List of Fellowships 

• Francesca Brooks (University College London)- The Visiting Research Fellowship will enable Francesca to begin work on this new project through research with the extensive and rich resources found amongst the Edwin Morgan Papers at the University of Glasgow Library.
• Suchitra Choudhury (Independent Scholar) – Suchitra is currently completing a monograph on Cashmere and Paisley shawls in British Literature and Culture. The Visiting Research Fellowship will allow Suchitra to consult rare books and documents, in particular, the Library’s Special Collections and Business Archives, to investigate the unique history of Paisley shawls and their local and global connections.
• Beth Jenkins (University of Essex) - Her fellowship will be spent looking at the Scottish Business Archive and the University of Glasgow’s institutional archive. This research will feed into two projects: first, her postdoctoral research on gender and professional culture in modern Britain, and, second, a study of working-class women’s experiences of higher education in the early twentieth century.
• Alison Mayne (University of Edinburgh) – Alison’s current work is focused on the affective properties of Scottish yarn, contemporary amateur makers’ relationship with small scale independent yarn businesses based in Scotland. She will use her Fellowship to investigate the papers of James Porteous & Co of Meadow Mills, Alva in Clackmannanshire to see what the story of this single mill can tell us about the wider context of Scottish woollen manufacture.
• Fiona Milne (University of York) - Fiona will investigate the David Murray collection at the University of Glasgow as part of a new project on antiquarian collecting practices of the late nineteenth century. She will explore how Murray’s collection, may have worked to configure notions of national and regional identity in the late nineteenth century - a transitional moment in the development of modern ideas about ‘Scottishness’.
• Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh (Aberystwyth University) – Rev James McLagan (1728–1805) is one of the most important figures of the eighteenth-century Gaelic-speaking world. His various activities as folklore collector, lexicographer, editor, poet, and commentator on the Ossianic Controversy are best evidenced by his collection of 1,600 manuscript pages now preserved in the University of Glasgow Library which Peadar will explore.
• Dot Porter (University of Pennsylvania) - For her fellowship project Dot will check the collation of a selection from the medieval and Renaissance codices in the MS Hunter collection at the University of Glasgow Library– creating new collations if necessary.
• Elizabeth Price (Kingston University, London) – Elizabeth will use the Stoddard-Templeton of Glasgow archives or carpet designers and manufacturers, to explore the social and technical history of carpet production, uncovering the technologies involved, with a view to creating a carpet as an artwork.
• Muey Ching Saeteurn (University of California) – Muey’s current project is a historical study about the role African migrant labourers had in expanding Kenya’s tea industry during the decolonization and early-independence era. She will investigate The James Finlay & Co archive at the University of Glasgow resource to delve into the social history of Kenya’s tea estate.
• Wonchul Shin (Pusan National University, South Korea) – He will use the Scottish Business Archive, particularly the Records of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Shop Stewards Committee and the Records of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Ltd., to investigate trade union policy on redundancy, as well as on negotiations with employers particularly in the 1970s-80s.
• Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart (University of the Highlands and Islands)- Domhnall’s research draws upon the history, literature, material culture, oral tradition and popular customs of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd. For his fellowship, Domhnall will study a unique collection of eighteenth-century Gaelic sermons, written by the Rev. Donald MacNicol of Lismore, to gain an insight into the changing nature of early modern Scottish Gaelic during a period of socio-economic and cultural transformation.
• Tim Verlaan (University of Amsterdam) – His Fellowship at the University of Glasgow will inform a broader project of investigating how the private sector, most notably retailers, have played a significant role in determining the redevelopment of Western European city centres. He will access the Scottish Business Archive to examine the House of Fraser collection.
• Sebastiaan Verweij (University of Bristol) – Sebastiaan’s research project will focus on some seventeenth-century commonplace books in the collection at Glasgow University Library. These manuscripts have rarely (or never) been the subject of academic study with a particular interest in their literary contents, and the ways that political events and issues (for example the Bishops’ Wars, Covenanting movements, Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and the Restoration) impacted upon the choice of texts.

 

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For more information contact Aine Allardyce in the University of Glasgow Communications and Public Affairs Office on 0141 330 7126 or email aine.allardyce@glasgow.ac.uk

 

First published: 27 January 2020