CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Stuart Hall Archive Project Summer Research Fellowship
Deadline: March 18, 2024
The John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University is pleased to announce a new collaboration with the Stuart Hall Archive Project (SHAP) at the University of Birmingham, UK, in conjunction with faculty partners at the Departments of English at Duke and North Carolina State University. For Summer 2024, we are seeking up to 2 Duke PhD students in the arts, humanities, and interpretive social sciences to travel to Birmingham for short-term research fellowships. The Fellowship will run for 8 weeks in all, with 4 weeks on site at SHAP. Each Fellow will receive a non-compensatory stipend of $6,435. Roundtrip travel to the UK will be covered, along with up to 4 weeks of housing at Birmingham.
We welcome applicants of any nationality, and are prepared to do what is possible and reasonable, within the guidelines of US, UK and international immigration authorities, to address students’ visa and immigration needs in order to ensure that they are able to travel abroad to conduct their research under the appropriate visa status. Duke’s travel team (globaltravel@duke.edu) within the Office of Global Affairs can aide with your travel documentation.
To apply, please send the following to fhi@duke.edu by Monday, March 18.
- A 1 to 2-page letter of interest describing a possible project; see parameters and suggestions below
- Your CV
- A brief letter from your Department’s Director of Graduate Studies, confirming your eligibility to receive this fellowship (may be sent as part of your application or under separate cover to fhi@duke.edu)
Interested applicants are strongly encouraged to attend a virtual info session on Thursday, March 7, at 10am; please sign up here. SHAP faculty and archivists will be on hand to answer questions. Administrative details of the fellowship will also be discussed. Please direct general queries to FHI Associate Director Christina Chia (christina.chia@duke.edu).
Program Description
The Stuart Hall Archive Project, based at the University of Birmingham (UK), is looking for graduate fellows to collaborate with us on exploring the research, teaching, and community engagement possibilities of this archive.
Stuart Hall (1932-2014) was a Jamaican-British academic, writer, cultural studies pioneer, public intellectual and teacher who made major interventions in cultural and political life: in theorizing race, class and nationhood; in working to establish the field of Cultural Studies; in his distinctive pedagogical practices and work as a public intellectual; and much more.
Hall’s papers were deposited at the Cadbury Research Library at Birmingham in 2018 and consist of 102 largely untouched boxes of unpublished reports, essays, scripts and speeches; teaching material; correspondence; editorial material; notes; ephemera and cuttings; and audio recordings and video cassettes.
The Stuart Hall Archive Project (2023-2026) aims to use these archives as a catalyst to explore Hall’s intellectual and political legacies today and we want to collaborate with graduate fellows to do so. We want to support your projects and interests in the archive. Possible areas for research study might include:
- Using Digital Humanities (or AI) approaches to generate new knowledge from, or reading against, the Black Archive.
- Situating Stuart Hall in his geographical (and temporal) contexts, whether Birmingham, the Caribbean, or internationally.
- Hall’s role in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) movement in the 1950s and 1960s and its relationship to the US Civil Rights movement.
- Under-explored or unknown relationships between Hall and other leading political figures and public intellectuals (such as Walter Rodney, C.L.R. James, or Edward Said).
Additionally, graduate fellows may consider a variety of forms and outcomes for their research, including but not limited to:
- Community engagement projects to facilitate use of the archives by people and groups outside of the academy
- Development of finding aids, or other resources that enable wider access to the archive
- Visualization of the geographies, temporalities, and relations of Hall to individuals, groups, and institutions as revealed by archive metadata
- Qualitative reports on discrete parts of the archive — specific projects, campaigns or critical work engaged by Hall; particular media holdings in the archive (audio, video, photographic, handwritten material); or, particular media that Hall engaged as evidenced in the archive (public broadcast radio or television; public street campaigning; or contributions to government inquiry or policy)