Awards for postdoctoral research by historians at Bangor

The School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology will benefit from two recent awards for postdoctoral research on the history of Wales. Both awards show there are opportunities for early career researchers to obtain research fellowships in the current funding environment, and highlight the important contribution postdoctoral scholars can make in the humanities.

Dr Katharine Olson will be joining the School in October following her success in the highly competitive British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships competition. The three-year award will enable her to write an innovative, multidisciplinary social history of religion in Wales from the Pre-Reformation Church to the Civil War: ‘Local Contexts of Change: Popular Religion, Community, and Confessional Identity in Wales, c.1500-1640’. A graduate of the universities of Chicago and Harvard, and currently holder of a Sir John Rhŷs Studentship in Celtic Studies at Jesus College, Oxford, Dr Olson is no stranger to Bangor, having spent a term here as an exchange student in 2003; in addition, Professor Huw Pryce was the external member of her Harvard Ph.D. dissertation committee. She will further enhance the School’s strengths in medieval and early modern history, as well as being a valuable addition to the wider body of scholars – in Bangor’s College of Arts and Humanities and beyond – whose research is linked with the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS).

The School’s expertise in modern and contemporary history has been recognized by the University of Wales Publications and Collaborative Research Committee, which has awarded its one-year research project in Welsh History for 2008/9 to Professor Duncan Tanner and Dr Andrew Edwards, who will direct ‘Welsh Language Acts and Welsh Language Activism 1964-2001: A Pilot Project’. Drawing on the directors’ well established track record in oral history, as well as Professor Tanner’s pioneering use of the Freedom of Information Act to disclose official documents relating to recent history, the project will investigate why the Welsh Language Acts of 1967 and 1993 were introduced, the operation and influence of the Welsh Language Board, and the relative importance of pressure from language activists and other groups, including people within government, in the passing and evolution of Welsh language legislation. The research will be undertaken by a postdoctoral researcher (to be appointed), and will lead to an application to support a larger scale project building on its findings.

Posted April 2008