Brotherton Fellowship
Scheme overview
The Brotherton Fellowship is a short-term postdoctoral fellowship which requires a researcher to make use of and promote Special Collections in University of Leeds Libraries. The scheme enables you to visit the University of Leeds and receive support in working with Special Collections.
Applicants for the Fellowship can propose to work with any of the Special Collections held within the Brotherton Library. The scheme is co-delivered by Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute and Cultural Collections and Galleries, University of Leeds Libraries.
Special Collections is the home to an internationally renowned set of collections of rare books, manuscripts, archives, art and objects.
- Our collections include Art; Art and Antiques Market; Manuscript Verse; Coin Collection; Cookery; Feminist Archive North; Gypsy, Traveller and Roma Collections; Incunabula; International Textile Collection; Leeds Poetry; Leeds Russian Archive; LGBTQ+ Collection; Medieval Manuscripts; Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society.
- Subject areas covered by Special Collections include business, education, literature, geography and travel, medicine, music, politics and social history, religion and theology, science, theatre and performance, and Yorkshire.
Brotherton Fellows participate in the University's research community and produce one or more outputs to promote the collection on which they are working.
The 2025 Brotherton Fellowship will be advertised in Spring 2025, with a deadline for applications of 30 June 2025. We will include a link to the advertisement from this page when it is available.
Previous Brotherton Fellows
2024
Ben Skinner focused on historical guides to agriculture from the 1700s in the Agriculture collection, unearthing an array of techniques around pest control and practical instructions on plants and fruits with nutritional value and medicinal properties, with a view to investigating a slower more mindful approach to engaging with the environment that sustains us.
Blog: Roaming the Archives: Experimental Research and Embodied Thinking – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Christopher Tinmouth analysed the Ripon Cathedral Cartulary with a particular emphasis on its representations of St Wilfred.
Blog: Managing A Medieval Memory: The Ripon Minster Cartulary – 1 – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Managing A Medieval Memory: The Ripon Minster Cartulary – 2 – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Collection consulted: Ripon Cathedral Manuscript Fragments - Library | University of Leeds
2023
Adam Bridgen worked on British working-class poets and their responses to industrialisation and its impact on the nature of their work and the environments they lived in.
Collection consulted: Ebenezer Elliott, correspondence and literary manuscripts with related material - Library | University of Leeds
2022
Anna Reeve examined the archives of Irene Manton, a world-leading botanist who spent much of her professional career at the University of Leeds, focusing on her collection of antiquities, why she bought them and how she used them in undergraduate teaching through to international lectures.
Focus on a LAHRI Postdoctoral Fellow - Anna Reeve | Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute
Collection consulted: Photographs of Irene Manton - Library | University of Leeds
Elizabeth West examined the Norah Smallwood collection to understand more of the pioneering editor’s life and work focusing specifically on how various facets of her life and relationships were interwoven.
Norah Smallwood and her Correspondence – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Collection consulted: Norah Smallwood, correspondence with some related material - Library | University of Leeds
2021
Richard Bellis focused on uncovering the circulation of bodies and body parts in nineteenth century Leeds, the influence of which impacted on the teaching of medicine.
Blog: Mobile Mummies and Moving Body Parts in Nineteenth-century Leeds – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Collection consulted: Leeds School of Medicine Archive - Library | University of Leeds
Charlotte Armstrong explored the changing depictions of disability on stage in Opera North productions from 1978-2013, exploring ideas of the dramaturgical prosthesis or scenographic prosthesis.
Blog: Disability on Stage at Opera North, 1978–2013 – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Collection consulted: Opera North Collection - Library | University of Leeds
2019
Natalya Din-Kariuki investigated ‘the different methods and technologies travellers employed in their practices of note-keeping, as well as the processes by which these notes became rhetorically invented and organised.’
Collection consulted: Travel (Brotherton Collection) - Library | University of Leeds
Pushpa Kumbhat examined how and why British universities, tutors and educationalists engaged with the ideas and recommendations of ‘The 1919 Report. The final and interim reports of the Adult Education Committee of the Ministry of Reconstruction’ between 1919 and 1939 – a time of political, economic and social turmoil.
Collection consulted: . University of Leeds Archive - Library | University of Leeds
2018
Leonardo Costantini identified manuscript fragments of the Ripon Cathedral Library Collection, tracing texts produced in Britain, France and Italy, which preserve an array of text types from antiphonal, liturgical, theological, legal and historical.
Blog: Discovering the Unknown Ripon Fragments – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Collection consulted: Ripon Cathedral Manuscript Fragments - Library | University of Leeds
Ruth Burton focused on archive mapping, drawing on the perspectives of academics and archivists, to interpret and visualise the relationships between objects and individuals, space and place, focusing on the poet Ken Smith’s archive.
Blog: Mapping the Ken Smith Archive – Leeds University Libraries Blog
Collection consulted: Ken Smith Archive - Library | University of Leeds