Last week we announced our Curran Fellowship winners for 2020 via our monthly newsletter. Curran Fellowships are awarded annually to help scholars defray the costs of travel to and research on primary sources and archives in the 19th-century periodical press. Applicants’ projected research may involve study of any aspects of the periodical press in any of its manifold forms, and may range from within Britain itself to the many countries, within and outside of the Empire, where British magazines and newspapers were bought, sold, and read during “the long nineteenth century” (ca. 1780-1914). Awards are made possible through the generosity of the late Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English, Colby College and long-time RSVP member.

This year our Curran Fellowship winners embark on a diverse variety of projects, from exploring global interactions to shifting temporal boundaries to uncovering understudied areas of periodical interest. The winning projects are as follows (full abstracts available here):

• • Diana Muriel Cooper-Richet (Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines), English-Language Periodicals Published in French Provincial Towns (1818-1912) 
  • Lydia Craig (Loyola University Chicago), Female Philanthropic Knitting:  Lady Harriet Scott’s “Grandmother” Patterns in The Queen    
  • Laura Diaz-Esteve (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), The Southeast Asia British Press and the Philippine-American War (1898-1902)
  • Beth Gaskell, The History of Early Regimental Journals
  • Erica Haugtvedt (South Dakota School of Mines & Technology), Transfictional Character and Transmedia Storyworlds in the British Long Nineteenth Century         
  • Sofia Huggins (Texas Christian University), Blank Spaces: Global Geographies of Moral Capitalism in the Anti-Slavery Reporter, 1831-1833      
  • Haejoo Kim (Syracuse University), Anti-Vaccination Periodicals and the Rise of Lay Medical Agency in Nineteenth-Century Britain
  • Carole O’Reilly (University of Salford), Satirising the City: Civic Humour, Place and Accountability in the Later Nineteenth Century Satirical Press       
  • Neil Ramsey (University of New South Wales Canberra), Romantic Era Military Periodicals and the Emotions of War
  • Maryam Sikander (SOAS University of London),  Punch in India: The Transcultural Life of a British Institution     
  • Matthew Wale, The Natural History Periodicals of Edward Newman (1801-1876)

Thank you to all who applied and congratulations to this year’s winners. We look forward to seeing how you advance our understanding of the Victorian periodical press!