Tag: bursaries

WSG Bursary Applications now open for 2025-26

WSG is offering a bursary of £750 to an early career researcher*, independent scholar or PhD student who is a member of the WSG. The bursary is intended to support research in any aspect of women’s studies in the period 1558-1837 for new or continuing interdisciplinary or single-discipline projects.

The deadline for bursary applications is 15 December 2025, and the successful applicant will be announced in January 2026. For further information, and to apply, please download the  application form.

Applications are considered by the WSG committee. The money will normally be paid on presentation of receipts. The successful applicant will be expected to give a paper at a future WSG meeting in person or via Zoom in the 2026-2027 seminar season. The contribution of the WSG bursary should be acknowledged in any resulting publications.

*Early career researcher is ‘an individual who is within eight years of the award of their PhD or within 6 years of their first academic appointment’ (AHRC).

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Recent Bursary Winners (for a full list of winners, visit our bursary page)

  • 2025: Valentina Aparicio, researching Maria Graham’s correspondence for her forthcoming monograph, Challenging Friendships: Scottish Women Travellers in Latin America, 1820–60 (Main Award); and Charlotte Vallis, ‘French diplomatic archives relating to Russian Empresses Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II’ (Travel Award), Patricia Ahern, ‘Enlightenment memories of Mary Queen of Scots’ (Travel Award), and Rachel Bynoth, ‘Anxiety in family letters’ (Travel Award).
  • 2024: Amy Solomons, ‘Eighteenth-century female reading experiences in historic house spaces’.
  • 2023: Eleanor Bird, ‘Margaret Davy, sister-in-law of Humphrey Davy and collector of his works’ (Main Award); and Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, ‘Examining three Georgian opera singers: Elizabeth Billington, Anna Selina Storace and Gertrude Mara’ (Travel Award).

WSG Bursary Applications now open for 2024-2025

WSG is offering a bursary of £750 to an early career researcher*, independent scholar or PhD student who is a member of the WSG. The bursary is intended to support research in any aspect of women’s studies in the period 1558-1837 for new or continuing interdisciplinary or single-discipline projects.

The deadline for bursary applications is 15 December 2024, and the successful applicant will be announced in January 2025. For further information, and to apply, please download the PDF application form here.

You can also download a Word application form.

Applications are considered by the WSG committee. The money will normally be paid on presentation of receipts. The successful applicant will be expected to give a paper at a future WSG meeting in person or via Zoom in the 2025-2026 seminar season. The contribution of the WSG bursary should be acknowledged in any resulting publications.

*Early career researcher is ‘an individual who is within eight years of the award of their PhD or within 6 years of their first academic appointment’ (AHRC).

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Previous Bursary Winners

  • 2024: Amy Solomons, ‘Eighteenth-century female reading experiences in historic house spaces’
  • 2023: Eleanor Bird, ‘Margaret Davy, sister-in-law of Humphrey Davy and collector of his works’ (Main Award); and Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, ‘Examining three Georgian opera singers: Elizabeth Billington, Anna Selina Storace and Gertrude Mara’ (Travel Award)
  • 2020: Anna Jamieson, ‘Spending and Shopping: Women’s Experience in the Eighteenth-Century Madhouse’ and Alexis Wolf, ‘Women Nurses and Inspectors of the Foundling Hospital, 1750-1830’ (Joint award with Foundling Museum)

WSG Bursary 2024 

We are delighted to announce that the 2024 WSG Bursary has been awarded to Amy Solomons. Amy is a trained archivist and librarian and  is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Liverpool and the National Trust. Her research focusses on eighteenth-century female reading experiences in historic house spaces. She will use the bursary to fund two research trips: to Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, and Sandon Hall, Staffordshire, each of which contains bibliographic and archival sources documenting Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, her daughter, Lady Mary Countess of Bute, and her granddaughter Lady Louisa Stuart.

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Previous Bursary Winners

  • 2023: Eleanor Bird, ‘Margaret Davy, sister-in-law of Humphrey Davy and collector of his works’ (Main Award); & Brianna Robertson-Kirkland , ‘Examining three Georgian opera singers: Elizabeth Billington, Anna Selina Storace and Gertrude Mara’ (Travel Award)
  • 2020: Anna Jamieson, ‘Spending and Shopping: Women’s Experience in the Eighteenth-Century Madhouse’ and Alexis Wolf, ‘Women Nurses and Inspectors of the Foundling Hospital, 1750-1830’ (Joint award with Foundling Museum)
  • 2019: Charlotte Young, ‘Women’s involvement in Canterbury sequestrations, 1643-50’; Hannah Jeans, ‘Women’s Reading Habits and Gendered Genres, c.1600-1700’
  • 2018: Madeleine Pelling, ‘The friendship of Horace Walpole and Mary Hamilton’; Rebecca Simpson, ‘Narratives of pregnancy’
  • 2017: Charmian Mansell, ‘A new history of female service in early modern England, 1550-1650

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WSG Bursary 2019-2020 Award Winners

Happy New Year to all our readers. We are pleased to be able to announce the winners of our two bursaries.

Anna Jamieson, Birkbeck was awarded the £750 prize to continue researching in the Fellowes archives in the Norfolk and Huntingdonshire Record Offices as part of her project ‘Spending and Shopping: Women’s Experience in the Eighteenth-Century Madhouse’.  Congratulations Anna!

The joint award with the Foundling Museum of £500 went to Alexis Wolf, Birkbeck.  Alexis will use the award to fund research in the Foundling archives as part of her project ‘Women Nurses and Inspectors of the Foundling Hospital, 1750-1830’. Congratulations Alexis!

Details of our 2020-2021 award scheme will be announced later in the year.

Charlotte Young and Hannah Jeans awarded WSG bursaries

The WSG is extremely pleased to announce it has awarded bursaries to Dr Charlotte Young, an early career scholar who gained her PhD in History at Royal Holloway, and Hannah Jeans, a PhD candidate in History at the University of York.

Charlotte will use the bursary to research her project on women’s involvement in the Canterbury sequestrations, 1643-50. She tweets as @charlie_l_y. Hannah will use hers to take up a Kanner Fellowship in British Studies at the Willam Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles where she will research the Pole family newsletter collection, c.1680-1710, which will inform her thesis ‘Women’s Reading Habits and Gendered Genres, c.1600-1700’. She tweets as @HannahJeans1.

The WSG bursaries are intended to support early career researchers, PhD students and independent scholars research “any aspect of women’s studies in the period 1558-1837”.  Previous winners have worked on topics from the experience of early modern female service to friendship, and pregnancy. Bursaries can be awarded for new or continuing, single or multidisciplinary projects.  They can be used to subsidise any costs incurred by the project.  To be eligible, applicants must be a member of the WSG.  The WSG bursary panel wish to thank all of this year’s applicants for their applications, and encourage those who have been unsuccessful to consider re-applying the following year.