Funded by
Braddick, Professor Michael SF130172
Professor of History, Univesity of Sheffield, Department of History
History / Early Modern History
John Lilburne and the English revolution
Awarded: £52,253
Professor Braddick will write a political life of John Lilburne building on new empirical work already in hand. It will focus on new techniques and possibilities for political mobilisation in revolutionary England, the networks that facilitated his campaigns and the ideas, rhetoric and emotional appeal that animated them. It will build on my earlier work on mobilisation and popular politics in the 1640s, which explained political change (institutional and ideological) as the result of activists’ efforts to define problems and opportunities and to mobilise support for their proposed solutions. It will also extend Professor Braddick’s earlier analysis of state formation as the outcome of continuous efforts by activists to define and respond to political challenges, and to legitimate political innovation; and his work on the counter-pressure of resistance and subversion. Integrating the analysis of mobilisation during the English revolution with the analysis of state formation and popular politics, it will offer a reinterpretation of revolutionary politics and their place in long-term political development.
Branigan, Professor Holly SF130180
Professor of Psychology of Language and Cognition, University of Edinburgh, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Psychology / Cognitive and Perceptual Psychology
A theoretical model of syntactic processing in children's language production
Awarded: £43,395
The ability to produce and comprehend structured language is a uniquely human skill that develops from birth. Yet although we know a great deal about the mental processes that adults use to combine individual words to form sentences, we know remarkably little about how these processes develop in children. This research sets out to answer this question, examining how theoretical models of adult processing might apply to children’s language use. Professor Branigan will ask how children’s grammatical processes might be similar to adults’ and how they might differ. For example, are children more likely to ‘speak as they think’, rather than planning ahead, because they have less working memory capacity? Equally, are they more likely to depend on what they know about individual words, rather than the grammar of the language as a whole, because they have limited experience of the language? This research will produce a theoretical model of how children combine words when they speak to form complex expressions, which can then be tested experimentally in future research.
Cook, Professor Robert SF130190
Professor of American History, University of Sussex, History
History / Modern History
Contested Realm: Civil War Memory in the United States Since 1865
Awarded: £46,442
The American Civil War was a sprawling, sanguinary conflict that saved the Union from destruction and liberated four million slaves at a cost of at least 750,000 lives. From the moment the fighting ended in 1865 Americans began constructing powerful narratives about the war that continue to serve as touchstones of individual and group identity. In many respects the United States is, as historian David Blight has argued, 'the stories it tells itself about its Civil War and its enduring aftermath.' Contested Realm demonstrates how the four primary, myth-laden strands of Civil War memory ‘Union, Confederate, African American and reconciliatory’ have evolved, clashed and interconnected over time, their rise and eclipse determined by evolving power relations in the United States. It provides the fullest account to date of how the Civil War has been remembered variously as a realm of hate, of sorrow, of consensus, and of adventure, and the impact which different memories have had on inter-regional and inter-racial relations in the modern republic.
Fulford, Professor Tim SF130207
Professor, De Montfort University, Faculty of Humanities, Art and Design
English Language and Literature / Romantic literature
The Collected Letters of Sir Humphry Davy
Awarded: £38,551.36
Professor Fulford, an experienced editor of 19th century correspondence, will co-edit the first-ever Collected Edition of the c. 1100 surviving letters of Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), one of the most significant figures in the scientific and literary cultures of the nineteenth-century. Very few of Davy’s letters have been edited to modern standards; fewer than 250 have been published even in the form of extracts or, expurgated and unannotated, in Victorian volumes. This edition will therefore increase the number of published letters over fivefold. It will provide fully annotated texts, making Davy’s scientific terminology more intelligible and expanding knowledge of the scientific and literary cultures to which he contributed. It will feature previously unpublished letters to/concerning such notables as Ampere, Banks, Berzelius, Coleridge, Cuvier, Dalton, Faraday, Fox Talbot, Godwin, Herschel, Humboldt, Mantell, Oersted, Peel, Scott, Southey, Volta, Watt, Wordsworth. Matters discussed include the Voltaic pile, discovery of new elements, electromagnetism, the miners' lamp, Lyrical Ballads
Griffiths, Dr David SF130033
Reader/University Lecturer in Archaeology, University of Oxford, Continuing Education
Archaeology / Landscape Archaeology
Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project
Awarded: £32,639.02
The Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project, Orkney (begun 2003), has undertaken extensive field survey culminating in several excavations. It has produced a range of internationally-important discoveries focusing on the Norse period (AD 800-1300). The most prominent of these is an intact longhouse settlement complex of the 11th century AD which is identifiably a skáli or central farm. An extensive project archive now exists, comprising digital, paper and photographic records, artefacts, environmental samples and radiocarbon dates. 17 collaborators are working on the material. The project has been funded by small grants from public bodies, personal donations and student fees. Dr Griffiths proposes to use the Fellowship to co-ordinate the final stages of specialist input, and for collating, writing and producing the project monograph. The Fellowship will also allow time for the preparation of the final deposit archive, in collaboration with Scottish authorities over finds and environmental materials, and with a permanent digital archiving body for the accompanying data.
Ryan, Dr James SF130143
Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography, University of Exeter, Geography
Geography / Historical Geography
Place and Popular Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Work and World of Robert Hunt (1807-1887)
Awarded: £41,327
This research seeks to advance scholarship on the relationship between place and popular science in nineteenth-century Britain by examining the work and world of an influential but little-studied figure: Robert Hunt (1807-1887). Based in south-west England and from a relatively humble background, Hunt forged a respected career as a writer, researcher, lecturer and organizer across a range of fields, most notably chemistry, photography, geology and folklore. As secretary of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society and Keeper of the Mining Record Office, and through his prodigious popular disseminations, Hunt was a major promoter of science to all classes of society. This research locates Hunt’s prolific outputs and activities within nineteenth-century networks of science and art, publishing and popularization, at local, regional and national scales. By examining Hunt’s place within distinctive local, regional and metropolitan circles of both elite and popular science, this research raises important questions about the mutual shaping of science and place in nineteenth-century Britain.
Sherratt, Dr Susan SF130093
Lecturer, University of Sheffield, Department of Archaeology
Archaeology / Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
Silver before coinage: a history of silver from the fifth millennium to the mid-first millennium BC
Awarded: £51,262
The history of silver charts the history of the spread of western Old World 'civilisation', from its earliest urban beginnings in western Asia in the 4th millennium BC to its encounter with the New World in the early modern period and beyond. It is a feature of silver over this long period that its economic and social values remain broadly unchanged, and go hand in hand with its cultural and symbolic values. Dr Sherratt proposes to trace the history of silver from its beginnings in the 5th millennium BC in western Asia (shortly before the appearance of the Uruk urban centres) to the mid-1st millennium BC (shortly after the introduction of coinage), by which time silver resources were being exploited over a very wide area of the western Old World. Among other things, this history will investigate and seek to explain the social, cultural and economic processes by which silver became the elite metal of choice in southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC, and subsequently for ceremonial drinking equipment, as a standard and medium of exchange and eventually for coinage over a much wider area.