The British Association for Romantic Studies | Folger | Wordsworth Trust Early Career Fellowship programme invites and supports early career researchers to spend a month in residence at the Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere.
The BARS Wordsworth Trust Early Career Fellowship began in 2017. This year the partnership is joined by The Folger Institute and will be offering FOUR month-long Fellowships to run concurrently, ideally in November 2024. Two Fellowships will be for UK scholars, and two for scholars based in the USA.
For 2024/25, the Fellowships are open to scholars from Black, Indigenous and other minority ethnic backgrounds working on any aspect of Romantic Studies who also:
- hold a PhD
- are not in permanent employment OR, have held a permanent academic post, but for less than five years by the application deadline
The Trust is centred around Dove Cottage, the Wordsworths’ home between 1799 and 1808, where William Wordsworth wrote most of his greatest poetry and Dorothy wrote her Grasmere journals. Dove Cottage opened to visitors in 1891, with the first museum opening in 1935 to coincide with the bequest of the Wordsworth family archive to the Trust. The Trust’s collection has grown to 65,000 books, manuscripts and works of art, but at its heart remains the manuscript poetry, prose and letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth.
In 2021 the site reopened as Wordsworth Grasmere after a £6m conservation and reinterpretation project, ‘Reimagining Wordsworth’ (see www.wordsworth.org.uk). We welcome about 30,000 visitors a year, with very positive feedback. The major new museum includes displays on the Wordsworths’ lives in Grasmere and the story of how William’s greatest poem, The Prelude, was written. A similar transformation is taking place across our activities, with programmes of school education, events and community outreach extending across Cumbria, especially into areas where people face barriers to access. For example, in the 12 months up to March 2024, the Trust facilitated 6,400 engagements with children and young people.
We are not prescriptive as to what Fellows will research – we invite Fellows to investigate and interpret the collections and the stories they hold and to use their time in Grasmere to help us and our audiences see the Wordsworths, the place and its collections through a new lens. Fellows might like to consider, for example, how to identify and make heard underrepresented voices, and to answer questions such as ‘what afforded this poet the time and space to write?’. But to reiterate, the research undertaken may proceed in whichever direction the Fellow wishes to take within the scope of the collection.
There will also be opportunities for the Fellows to be involved in the creation and delivery of learning activities at the Trust. These may range from sharing research with staff and volunteers, to preparing and delivering activities for our daily visitors, to working alongside our staff in activities for school pupils, students and people facing barriers to learning.
Each Fellow will be given £750 and offered a room in a house with shared bathrooms and kitchen at a cost of £350 for the month (including energy and council taxes) onsite at Wordsworth Grasmere. The accommodation is shared with trainees and interns (from the USA) and is part of the community of staff settled around Dove Cottage. Those travelling from the USA will be offered extra to cover travel.
Selection Process
Application for the awards is competitive. Applicants are requested to write outlining the subject area they wish to study; what it is they wish to learn and any areas of the Trust’s work they wish to be involved with (maximum 1 page A4). They should also send a recent CV.
Deadline for applications: Sunday 29th September at midnight
Decisions made by: Friday 4th October
Arrival in Grasmere: 1st November 2024
Applications to be sent to Victoria Mitchell v.mitchell@wordsworth.org.uk. Shortlisting will be completed with a representative of each of the three partners.