Huntington Exchange for Birmingham staff and doctoral researchers

The Huntington Library and Art Museum is one of the foremost private research libraries in the world, located in San Marino, Southern California.

This ‘Birmingham Fellow’ should be an academic or PhD student working in the areas of British and American History and Literature; History of Science, Medicine, and Technology; British and American Art History, or in areas supported by Huntington collections as demonstrated in the candidate’s application. Staff must be employed, or postgraduate students registered for a PhD, in the College of Arts & Law at the University of Birmingham.

The College of Arts and Law will fund one Fellow to visit the Huntington Library for one month. University of Birmingham provides the roundtrip air fare and ground transportation for the Birmingham Fellow. University of Birmingham will pay the Birmingham Fellow EITHER a stipend of £3,000 OR reimburses expenses up to the amount of £3000 incurred during the one-month fellowship at The Huntington, subject to the Birmingham Fellow’s execution of The Huntington’s Travel Grantees Fellowship Agreement and subject to University of Birmingham’s current finance policies.

The Huntington will provide information on finding accommodation near the Huntington Library.

To apply, applicants will submit the following to shacoperations@contacts.bham.ac.uk (2025 deadlines will be announced here):

• Project description consisting of three parts: description of the project and its significance; a list of the specific Huntington materials to be consulted; and an outline of the plan of work for the fellowship period (max 1,000 words)
• Outline of how the research will contribute to your School’s research priorities (max 500 words)

Note that fellowships cannot be taken by staff during term time unless this has been agreed with their Head of School or they have research leave.

The process is administered by a panel drawn from SHaC (including the School Director of Research and History Director of Research), with representation from at least one other school in the College of Arts and Law. The outcome will be notified by 1 March.

Assessors may take into account the opportunities applicants have to apply for other sources of funding for this research.

We strongly advise applicants also apply to the Huntington’s own schemes. If an applicant to the ‘Birmingham Fellow’ scheme is successful in these, we would expect them to withdraw their application to be the ‘Birmingham Fellow’.

For more information please contact Kate Smith (School of History and Cultures): k.smith@bham.ac.uk.