23 Feb 09

Head of Humanities, Professor Sally Shuttleworth, is delighted that the Division has received funding of almost £3 million

Oxford’s Humanities Division has been awarded almost £3 million in research grants from the Mellon Foundation. The awards will fund two groups of postdoctoral fellowships, a collaborative programme on the intellectual history of 17th-century Europe, Cultures of Knowledge, and seedcorn funding for a project focusing on medieval libraries.

The postdoctoral fellowships reflect the enormous diversity of research and teaching in the Humanities at Oxford. With funding totaling £1.3 million over five years, six postdoctoral fellows take up two-year posts starting in October 2009, and a second group of five fellows will commence in October 2011.

Two fellowships in the new Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, in Sociolinguistics (joint with the Faculty of English) and Semantics (joint with Faculty of Philosophy) reflect the exciting growth in this area. A second fellowship in the Faculty of Philosophy is devoted to the emerging area of the philosophy of cognitive science, undertaking cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on the relationship between perception and thought, whilst fellowships in Ethnomusicology (Faculty of Music), Transnational History (Faculty of History), and Hindu Religious Cultures post 1700 (Faculty of Oriental Studies) emphasise the Division’s global research interests.

These prestigious fellowships offer outstanding early-career scholars the chance to concentrate on their research using the unparalleled collections of the Bodleian and associated libraries whilst also gaining teaching experience and being provided with bespoke training opportunities.

The Cultures of Knowledge project explores the history of early modern science through the study of the intellectual exchange of five sets of correspondences. Drawing on the unrivalled collections of Oxford’s museums and libraries, the project will bring these resources to scholars outside the University both through the creation of a catalogue, and international collaborations.

Professor Hotson, leading the project, said: 'The invaluable thing about a grant of this magnitude is it allows us to pursue several interrelated projects simultaneously and work toward an ambitious goal in a series of measured steps.  It will fund both an intensive engagement with the rich collections of manuscript correspondence in Oxford and an attempt to build a broader scholarly community coextensive with the international networks we are attempting to explore.

'Our ultimate aim is to create a central digital forum for the collection, publication, and cross-listing of seventeenth century intellectual correspondences in a variety of forms, which eventually can facilitate work across the whole field of early modern intellectual history.'

Another project, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, has received funding for a pilot-year, in which a digital resource will be built and work begun to collate evidence for the holdings of medieval libraries. The dispersals of British libraries during the Reformation broke continuity earlier and to a greater extent than elsewhere in Europe. Professor Richard Sharpe is leading the project to gather and interpret the surviving documentary record, library catalogues and booklists drawn up in the middle ages.

The award will support work towards a database of surviving books that show evidence of a medieval library provenance. It is intended to trial the integration of these two strands of evidence in a resource that will enable an integrative approach to the virtual reconstitution of medieval libraries. The overview that will emerge of what works were available where and when will allow a more systematic view of the learned culture of the middle ages than has previously been possible.

Head of Humanities, Professor Sally Shuttleworth said: 'We are delighted by the generosity of the Mellon Foundation, which recognises the key role Oxford plays in training the next generation of leading academics. The project on the Cultures of Knowledge is an exciting development, which brings together academics in a range of disciplines, and, in its international scope, mirrors the networks of correspondence between intellectuals in Europe in the seventeenth century. The medieval libraries project builds on earlier work at the University and will lay the foundations for a wide-reaching research tool that will enhance our understanding of medieval culture.'