British Academy awards eight new Senior Research Fellowships to established scholars

Exploring the historical trends and environmental influences that have shaped the Middle East, analysing documentaries about the Holocaust, and editing the letters of a celebrated Irish writer; the British Academy has awarded funding to eight research projects across the UK.  

Altogether the Academy, in association with the Leverhulme Trust and the Thank-Offering to Britain Fund, has awarded eight Senior Research Fellowships worth a combined total of £377,000.

The BA/Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowships are designed to allow established academics to complete a major research project – typically a career-defining work.

The awards relieve individuals from teaching and administration work in order to bring an existing research project to fruition. Particular focus is on individuals who have worked on a project for a long time with little or no prospect of completing it.

Each year there are eight awards, seven made possible thanks to the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust and one occasional award – the Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship – provided by the Association of Jewish Refugees in gratitude for the UK’s support for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

This year’s Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship goes to Professor Sue Vice (University of Sheffield), whose research project, Beyond Shoah: Claude Lanzmann's Outtakes and the Visual Archive, will provide an account and analysis of the 250 hours of interview footage cut from Claude Lanzmann’s Holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985).

The Senior Research Fellowships scheme has been available for over 30 years and more than 200 scholars have benefitted from it since its inception.

The projects set to receive funding are:

• In Search of Justice and Dignity: The Middle East Since 1900 – Dr Frederick Anscombe, Reader in Modern History, Birkbeck, University of London


• Ocean Justice – Professor Chris Armstrong, Professor in Political Theory, University of Southampton


• Quantifying and Clarifying the Interplay of Legal Regimes in the Counter-terrorism Sphere with Particular Emphasis on Intersection with the Law of Armed Conflict and Human Rights Law – Professor Fionnuala Ni Aolain, Professor of Law, University of Ulster


• Migrants in Anchorage: An Ethnography of Palestinians in London – Dr Michelle Obeid, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Manchester


• Irresponsible States, Responsible Citizens – Dr Avia Pasternak, Senior Lecturer in Global Ethics, University College London


• The Letters of John McGahern – Professor Frank                 Shovlin, Professor of Irish Literature in English and Head of Department, University of Liverpool


• Politics and Script: Anglo-Saxon Influence at the Carolingian Court – Professor Joanna Story, Professor of Early Medieval History and Research Director, University of Leicester


• Beyond Shoah: Claude Lanzmann's Outtakes and the Visual Archive – Professor Sue Vice, Professor of English Literature, University of Sheffield.