Joint Fellowship with Special Collections

The IDRC in Digital Humanities and Museums and Collections is delighted to be able to offer a Joint Fellowship to one researcher to support innovative, collection-driven digital humanities research.  To facilitate research, funding is available for one Fellowship, worth £2,000.

A successful fellow will work with one of the following collections, identified by the Collections team, which we hope to represent a diverse range of subject areas and offer rich potential for archive and digital humanities research:

• Max Weber and Donald Gordon;
• collections that focus on Owen Jones and the Great Exhibition of 1851;
• the W.H. Smith archive;
• the Nancy Astor collection;
• the University History Collection;
held in Special Collections and/or the University Art Collection.

The IDRC DH

As the IDRC DH evolves, it seeks to support UoR researchers through internal funding opportunities and a packed calendar of training and events. For more details on DH plans for the 2026-2027 academic year, and to ask questions, Dr Mara Oliva, Dr Rachel Lewis, and Abbie Tibbott will be available at the back-to-campus event on the afternoon of 11th November.

We strongly suggest that researchers check the eligibility criteria before beginning an application. All fellowship information is available on a new page on our website. You will also find the link to the application form on this page.

Our fellowship fosters new and renewed connections between researchers and professional services staff, and helps the successful applicant learn new skills for personal development alongside their project. It is a fantastic opportunity to get up close with the archives and collections held at Reading, and to spread the word about their usability and reach through DH tools and methodologies.

Help and Guidance

If you have a question about eligibility criteria, fellowship outputs, and digital humanities, please contact Abbie Tibbott, the DH Officer at digitalhumanities@reading.ac.uk. For queries about the selected collections, how Special Collections operates, and associated processes, please contact Archivist Sharon Maxwell at s.maxwell@reading.ac.uk.