The British Academy announces new international Fellowships for postdoctoral researchers

The British Academy has awarded over £1 million to 13 promising overseas academics, allowing them to pursue postdoctoral research in the UK. The winning projects range from charting the vanished landscape of early Islamic Medina to rethinking urban citizenship in Latin America and exploring the archaeology of Kubuku in south eastern Zimbabwe.

Supported by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the awards have been allocated under the Newton International Fellowships scheme. Worth up to £100,000 each, these Fellowships enable talented early career researchers from any country overseas to work for two years at a UK institution of their choice.

The aim is to support the development and training of the next generation of research talent and foster the creation of long-term collaborative links with the UK.

The award-holders include:

• Dr Denisse Roman (University of Aberdeen) – Gray zones in agribusiness regulation and their harmful consequences: environmental damage, precarious labour and the spread of violence
• Dr Sacha Beniamine (University of Surrey) – Solving the word puzzle: morphological analysis beyond stem and affixes
• Dr Paola Vargas Arana (King’s College London) – Africans in Antioquia and Chocó golden mines
• Dr Dolores Señorans (University of Cambridge) – Rethinking urban citizenship in Latin America: precarious labour and dispossession amongst garment workers in Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Mr Yi Lu (University of Oxford) – The dustbin of history: archival politics in modern China
• Dr Emeka Thaddues Njoku (University of Birmingham) – De-risking policy: terrorism financing and the securitization of Muslim charities in the United Kingdom and Nigeria
• Dr Shaena Weitz (University of Bristol) – Rescinding genius
• Dr Daniel Fuks (University of Cambridge) – The flowering desert: first millennium CE agricultural developments in the Negev reconstructed from dung microbiomes and rubbish-dump plant remains
• Dr Awanish Kumar (University of Edinburgh) – The Dalit land question in India: ideological roots and political Praxis
• Dr Russell Kapumha (University of Oxford) – On missing links and bridging gaps: the archaeology of Kubiku, a Zimbabwe culture site in Masvingo, south eastern Zimbabwe
• Dr Aila Santi (School of Oriental and African Studies) – At the origins of the Holy city: reconstructing the vanished landscape of early Islamic Medina from topography and written sources
• Dr Sasha Frade (University of Southampton) – Exploring gender-based violence among displaced migrant women from Venezuela and El Salvador
• Dr Pedzisai Maedza (University of Warwick) – Chains of Memory in the Postcolony: Performing and Remembering the Namibian Genocide.

Professor Simon Goldhill, Foreign Secretary & Vice-President of the British Academy, said:

‘At a time when we are all more aware than ever of the value of global scholarship, we are delighted to announce the 2020 cohort of the British Academy’s Newton International Fellows. These awards help to facilitate the development of some of the world’s most talented early-career researchers, while also benefitting UK higher education and research with each Fellow bringing unique insights, perspectives and experience to their partner university. We look forward to seeing the results of these fascinating research proposals.’

There is currently no call open for the Newton International Fellowships scheme. Please sign up to our newsletter here or keep monitoring our website for when details of the next call become available.