Awards and Prizes
BARS supports a portfolio of prizes and awards, which are largely targeted towards postgraduates and early career scholars. These all have their own pages, which are linked to from the brief descriptions below.
- BARS' longest-running scheme is the Stephen Copley Research Awards, named for one of the Association's founders and established in order to allow postgraduates and early career scholars to travel to relevant libraries and archives. A number of awards are made each year; the maximum sum that an individual can apply for is £500.
- In 2014, BARS established its First Book Prize, which is awarded biennially at the International Conference to the author of the best first monograph in Romantic Studies.
- In 2016, BARS established the BARS/Wordsworth Trust Early Career Fellowship in collaboration with the Wordsworth Trust. This fellowship provides accommodation for a month in Grasmere and financial support towards travel to allow an early career researcher to work with the Trust on audience engagement and create a plan of their own to engage new audiences.
- Also in 2016, BARS began a new collaboration with the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) on the Nineteenth-Century Matters scheme, for which both organisations work with a host institution to provide an otherwise-unaffiliated postdoctoral researcher with a platform from which to organise professionalization workshops and research seminars on a theme related to nineteenth-century studies.
- In 2023, BARS awarded the inaugural President’s Fellowship, which is an award of up to £1500 open to scholars from Black, Indigenous and other minority ethnic backgrounds working on any aspect of Romantic Studies to support research, teaching and/or public outreach expenses.
- Also in 2023, BARS awarded the inaugural Open Fellowship, which is an award of up to £2000 available to scholars at any career stage undertaking exceptional work at the forefront of Romantic studies to support research expenses