Yale Centre for British Art - Visiting Scholarships (up to 4 months)

The Yale Center for British Art offers residential awards ranging from one to four months to scholars undertaking postdoctoral or equivalent research related to British art. These awards allow scholars of literature, history, the history of art, and related fields to study the Center’s holdings of paintings, drawings, prints, rare books, and manuscripts. The Center also offers several pre-doctoral residential awards ranging from one to two months for graduate students writing doctoral dissertations in the field of British art.

Visiting Scholar awards include the cost of travel to and from New Haven and also provide accommodations and a living allowance. Recipients are required to be in residence in New Haven and must be free of all other significant professional responsibilities during their stay.

Applications to become a visiting scholar between July 2009 and June 2010 must reach the YCBA by January 16, 2009. It is too late to apply for this deadline, but if this is something that is applicable and of interest it is worth looking at this again around September/October 2009 for an application in January 2010.

For more information see: http://ycba.yale.edu/education/edu_fellowships.html

Open University lecturer wins prestigious French literature prize

Tim Benton, Professor of Art History at The Open University, has just been announced the joint winner of the Prix du Livre by the Academie d’Architecture in France. The award is the most prestigious prize for books about architecture in the French language and he shares it with architect and architectural historian Philippe Prost.

Professor Benton’s book Le Corbusier conférencier, is a collection of numerous excerpts, preliminary notes, accompanying drawings, and photographs that architect Le Corbusier produced for his lectures. It covers the period 1924 – 1929 and analyses the construction, content and use of verbal and visual aids.

By using manuscript notes and eyewitness accounts, Professor Benton was able to reconstruct the content of unscripted presentations, thereby unlocking a completely new perspective on Le Corbusier’s thinking.

The book was selected from a shortlist of eight, nominated by a jury of architects, historians and critics. Commenting on his award, Professor Benton said: “I am extremely excited by the jury’s selection of my book, since the book is an unusual one and not the typical architectural monograph. I became fascinated with Le Corbusier’s architecture when I first saw it in real life, and the Fondation Le Corbusier’s rich archive has kept me hooked ever since. The richness of the collection is a fascinating and complex challenge for anyone studying it.”

Le Corbusier conférencier was first published in 2007 in French. An English edition, The Rhetoric of Modernism: Le Corbusier as a lecturer will be published in May 2009 by Birkhauser.

Editor's Notes
Tim Benton, Professor of Art History at The Open University, has worked on the architecture of Le Corbusier since 1973. His classic work, The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, originally published in French in 1984 and in English in 1987, has been reissued in a revised edition in 2006 (French, English and Italian editions). He has worked on numerous exhibitions, including Art Deco 1910-1939 (2003) and Modernism Designing a new world 1914-1939 (2006), both at the V&A.

Tim is a member of the Conseil d’Administration (managing committee) of the Fondation Le Corbusier and is currently chairing a working party producing a comprehensive edition of all Le Corbusier’s lecture notes.

He is the Robert Sterling Clark Visiting Professor of Art History at Williams College, Massachusetts.

Text from OU Press release 18 Dec 2008

Open University International Contemporary Writing magazine wins Arts Council funding

Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing, housed at the OU and edited by Susheila Nasta of the English Department has won an additional grant from the Arts Council of England to support our 25th anniversary year in 2009. Susheila and the Wasafiri team based in Camden (Region 1) will be co-ordinating and organising a series of high profile events in London next year. The grant to support these events is for £36,000. Events will include a live event at the British Library with invited writers talking about the 'Books That Made Me', participation in the London Book Fair (India focus) in partnership with the British Council, the launch of a New Writing Prize (judged by Blake Morrison, Susheila Nasta, Mimi Khalvati, Margaret Busby) and a day of anniversary events at the Festival Hall, South Bank in October 09 including a number of highly distinguished writers.

We will also be publishing a bumper special issue.

This is very good news indeed especially in the current economic climate. The grant supplements our annual award as an Arts Council revenue client.

For more information about Wasafiri see www.wasafiri.org

Edited from email (08/12/08) from Dr Susheila Nasta, Professor of Modern Literature, Editor, Wasafiri.

Up to £500,000 Big Lottery Funding available for Third Sector Research Programme (UK)

Under this programme, community and voluntary groups are able to apply for grants of between £10,000 and £ 500,000 (and for exceptional projects up to £1 million) for up to five years to undertake research in the areas of social, medical or socio-medical research. Applicant organisations are encouraged to link up with universities and the wider research community, however universities themselves are ineligible to apply for funding. It is expected that the findings from funded research will ultimately lead to the development of better services for people in the UK. The Research programme aims to influence local and national policy and practice by funding VCS organisations to produce and disseminate evidence-based knowledge. In the longer term the programme, through producing sound evidence, aims to help develop better services and support for beneficiaries.

Three pre-application seminars will be held in late January/early February 2009. The dates and venues are:

• 20 January - Newcastle
• 27 January - Birmingham
• 3 February - London

Application Form: Register with the programme on-line. If your registration is accepted you will be sent a password to open the on-line application form.
Deadline: Applications can be submitted at any time up to the 29th May 2009(The previously scheduled Round 2 has been cancelled).
Contact: Research Programme, B329 Harwell, Oxon, OX11 0QJ.
Tel: Research Helpline - 0845 0711068 (textphone 18001 0845 0711068).
Email: researchprogramme@aeat.co.uk
Website: http://www.bigresearchprogramme.org.uk/content.php?key=home

50 awards of up to £15,000 available from ERSC for multi-institutional seminar groups

Seminar Groups are multi-institutional groups of academic researchers, postgraduate students and non-academic users who meet regularly to exchange information and ideas with the aim of advancing research within their fields. Where appropriate, Seminar Group members should be drawn from industry, Government Departments and other relevant organisations as well as from academic institutions. The ESRC would particularly encourage Seminar Groups explicitly designed to bring together leading researchers from across disciplines to identify new research agendas or capacity building priorities.

Funding is available for UK Research Organisations eligible for Research Council Funding to undertake these Research Seminars. For the 2008/09 Competition, the ESRC expects to make approximately 50 awards of up to £15,000 each for a maximum period of two years. Please note that the Seminars Competition is a non-fEC Competition. An additional £3,000 will be made available for applications where a strong case is made for the inclusion of international academics at events, or holding events abroad.

Please check website for further information.

Deadline: 15 January 2009 (watch out in Sept/Oct 2009 for next round)

It is probably too late to apply for this year if you haven't already been working on a bid, but we have included in the blog to be aware of it for next year.

British Academy Visiting Fellowships (up to 6 months)

The Academy's Visiting Fellowships scheme enables early-career scholars from overseas working in any branch of the humanities or social sciences to apply, in conjunction with a UK host academic, to spend two to six months undertaking a clearly specified research project in the United Kingdom.

Candidates must demonstrate great promise and show that they would benefit from time to pursue their research in the United Kingdom. The Academy regards the host's engagement with the visitor as crucial in ensuring a successful visit. Applications will be prioritised where the host demonstrates a strong interest in the visit, where it is clear that the visitor will be well supported and mentored, and where the mutual benefits are explained.

Part of the funding is allocated for candidates from Africa, and part for candidates from Latin America and the Caribbean. Some funding will also be allocated to candidates from China.

The Academy will grant the title of British Academy Visiting Fellow, and award funding to meet the costs of the visit.

Next deadline: Monday 12th January 2009 (there will be future deadlines to look out for)

See http://www.britac.ac.uk/funding/guide/intl/visfellsnfa.cfm for more information.

Please check website for up to date guidance before making any application. If you wish to be a Visiting Fellow with the Open University Faculty of Arts, you will need a full-time academic from the faculty to sponsor you, and they will need to have discussed your proposed application with the Research and Enterprise Support Team (REST) at least 4 weeks before you intend to submit your application.

Social/professional networking site for academics

Forget Facebook, Dr Richard Price of Oxford University, with a team of people from Stanford and Cambridge, has launched a new networking site aimed at academics: http://www.academia.edu

Dr Price says that the site has two functions:

"1 It shows academics around the world structured in a 'tree' format, displayed according to their departmental and institutional affiliations.

2 It enables academics to see news on the latest research in their area the latest people, papers and talks."

Even if you are not in a current contract with a university there is a place for Independent researchers - "Independent Researchers" portion of the tree at http://independent.academia.edu

Information edited from an email date: Wed, 26 Nov 2008
From: progers@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Announcing "Academia.edu" - Tree of Academics Launches