School of Social and Political Science

New project allocates £750,000 for research in decoloniality



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The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh has launched a new fellowships programme to lead research on decoloniality.

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The Institute Project on Decoloniality 2021-24 (IPD’24) is offering £750,000 over three years to fund fellowships for scholars from around the world to visit Edinburgh to conduct their research. The fellowships will focus on themes such as decolonising the curriculum, the British Empire, slavery, contemporary inequalities and reparations. 

Building on existing work

The three-year project will augment existing work by the Centre for African Studies and the Centre for South Asian Studies at the School of Social and Political Science, and from research networks and centres across the University. These include RACE.ED, UncoverED, the Edinburgh Centre for Global History and others.

The Centre for Research Collections is also working with IASH to explore the University’s own history, archives and colonial legacy. 

The Director of IASH, Steve Yearley, said: “In the 50 years since IASH was founded, many of our fellows have researched topics such as the slave trade and post-colonial identities, but the new Institute Project on Decoloniality allows us to dig deeper than ever before.

“We are thrilled that so many of our funders and partners want to join us on this three-year project, and look forward to working with academics from around the globe.”

The Fellowships

IPD’24 offers scholars the opportunity to visit Edinburgh for between two and ten months, based in the beautiful 19th-century buildings of Hope Park Square. Fellowships include stipends and travel grants, a private office, full library and archival access, bespoke events and annual conferences to explore the research emerging from the project. 

While the fellowships tend to be linked with Schools or centres at the University of Edinburgh, IASH will be a safe space beyond individual Schools for researchers from the University and the wider international academic community to collaborate and respond to the IPD'24 themes

Around 35 fellowships will be awarded each year. A full list of the fellowship programmes accepting applications in the IPD’24 themes is available here.

As well as the annual conferences, the project will result in three volumes of conference proceeding publications (as part of IASH’s Occasional Papers series) and a major publication, written as a collaboration between fellows. 

There will also be a one-off commission for a playwright to create a script inspired by the IPD’24 themes, to be performed at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.

IASH-SSPS Research Fellowships open for applications

SPS’ existing IASH fellowship programme will still be open to applications across the social and political sciences, but in line with IPD'24, applications on the theme of decoloniality are particularly encouraged for this upcoming funding round.

These fellowships encourage interdisciplinary research, international scholarly collaboration and networking activities of visiting research fellows in collaboration with one or more academics from SPS.

Applications are now open, closing at 5pm GMT on 26 February 2021.

Find out more about the fellowships and the application procedure here:

IASH-SSPS Research Fellowships

Find out more

More details can be found on the IASH website:

Institute Project on Decoloniality 2021-24

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