The Institute is proud to announce the Fellowship cohort for academic year 2026-27. From more than twenty countries, the Fellows will work with mentors and collaborators across all of the Schools within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, and beyond. They range from recent PhD graduates to eminent senior scholars, but are united by IASH's core mission of interdisciplinary working. As usual, the research projects will be immensely varied, from trans/queer erasure in Russian culture to the algorithmic pollution of generative AI 'slop'. This is just a snapshot of the multitude of exciting scholarship that we'll be hosting.Within themes of climate and health, Fellows will variously embark on an investigation into chemical weapons in twentieth-century Britain, and create a plant-dyed patchwork quilt to explore everyday environmental relationships and slow making. Amaris Ketcham from the University of New Mexico will develop a graphic memoir research project that examines how Scotland's blue and green places support wellbeing, from Victorian hydrotherapies to today's wild swimming and forest bathing. Declan Wiffen of the University of Kent will use lichen as a model for rethinking contemporary nature writing.Race and the far-right is an area of interest for numerous Fellows, from David Farrell-Banks' examination of how Christian heritage is being mobilised among far-right groups, and the potential for theologically-rooted progressive opposition to far-right extremism, to Rémy-Paulin Twahirwa's walking ethnography exploring Black mobility, surveillance and anti-migrant discourse in post-Brexit Britain. Victoria Camille Westmont of the University of Alabama at Birmingham goes further back in time to unpick the far-right's weaponized nostalgia for an imagined industrial past in both the UK and the US.The law offers scope for a series of projects, including Lady Sarah Woolfe's project on gender within the senior judiciary of Scotland, and an investigation into the intersecting legal, institutional and moral-religious structures that aim to regulate child sexual offending in Pakistan, led by Adnan Ashraf. Also centred on Pakistan, Fatima Naveed returns to IASH to complete her research on censorship, sedition and blasphemy.African FellowshipDr Iqra AtifUniversity of the Witwatersrand1 Dec 2026 - 31 Jan 2027Urban Heat Exposure, Space, and Inequality: A Socio-Ecological Interpretation Using Geospatial TechnologiesAfrican FellowshipDr Johannes MachinyaUniversity of the Witwatersrand1 Dec 2026 - 31 Jan 2027Datafying Self-care: Sociotechnical Logics of Data Extraction, Sharing, and Monetisation in South Africa’s mHealth Apps LandscapeAmerican Philosophical Association FellowshipProfessor Cressida J. HeyesUniversity of Alberta1 Nov - 31 Dec 2026Sleep is the New Sex: A Feminist Philosophy of SleepAmerican Philosophical Society FellowshipDr Kaitlin MooreWake Forest University1 Jan - 31 Mar 2027Quantum Currents: Indigenous Cosmologies and Virtual Reality PoeticsCharles Wallace India Trust FellowshipDr Mohamed Shafeeq KarinkurayilManipal Academy of Higher Education1 Feb - 30 Apr 2027Designing a Digital-Analogue Archive and Exhibition on Gulf Migration based on Malayalam Gulf Migrant MemoirsCharles Wallace Pakistan Trust FellowshipDr Adnan AshrafParaplegic Center Peshawar / College of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation1 Jan - 31 Mar 2027Governing Child Sexual Offending in Pakistan: Masculinity, Moral Authority, and Institutional Responses to RehabilitationDaiches-Manning Memorial Fellowship in 18th-Century Scottish StudiesDr Thomas ArchambaudUniversity of Glasgow1 Jan - 31 Mar 2027The Colonial Politics of Distance: Kenneth Murchison, East India Company Networks and Edinburgh’s Medical EnlightenmentDigital Research Postdoctoral FellowshipDr Pratiksha AshokTilburg University1 Jan - 30 Jun 2027The Slop Economy: Algorithmic Pollution and the Externalities of AI ContentDigital Research Postdoctoral FellowshipDr Alasdair MilneUniversity of Glasgow1 Nov 2026 - 30 Apr 2027Collaborating Around Machines: Towards an Ontology of Collaboration for Machine Learning Art Practice beyond Generative AIEnvironmental Humanities Visiting Research FellowshipDr Laura PottingerUniversity of Manchester1 Feb - 30 Apr 2027The Unfinished Quilt: Stitching and Slow-Making Intimate People-Plant Relationships for the Environmental HumanitiesEnvironmental Humanities Visiting Research FellowshipProfessor Peter ThorsheimUniversity of North Carolina at Charlotte1 Sep - 30 Nov 2026Chemical Weapons, the Environment and Health in Britain and the British EmpireEnvironmental Humanities Visiting Research FellowshipDr Declan WiffenUniversity of Kent1 Jun - 31 Jul 2027ThallusFulbright Scotland Distinguished ScholarAmaris KetchamUniversity of New Mexico1 Sep 2026 - 28 Feb 2027Sea Cure: Centuries of Healing on Scottish ShoresGENDER.ED Postdoctoral FellowshipDr Manal ShqairIndependent scholar1 Sep 2026 - 30 Jun 2027Palestinian Women’s Eco-Sumud: Nomadism, Settler Colonialism and EnvironmentalismHeritage Collections Research FellowshipDr Yasmin AkhterUniversity of London1 Sep 2026 - 28 Feb 2027Locating African Lives in the George Shepperson PapersHeritage Collections Research FellowshipDr Robert FellIndependent scholar1 Jan - 30 Jun 2027Heritage Dialogues: Mapping Connections, Legacies and Futures in the School of Scottish Studies ArchivesHeritage Collections Research FellowshipDr Anisha PalatTamil Nadu Council of Historical Research1 Sep - 30 Nov 2026Colonial Legacies & Ecological Erasure in Hunting Photography, India, c.1800-1950IASH-Alwaleed Postdoctoral FellowshipDr Ehsan KashfiUniversity of Copenhagen1 Sep 2026 - 30 Jun 2027Dis-Islamia in Europe: Migration and the Politics of Anti-Islamic Sentiments in the Iranian DiasporaIASH-CTPI Duncan Forrester FellowshipDr David Farrell-BanksUniversity of Edinburgh1 Sep 2026 - 30 Jun 2027The Church and the Far-Right in Scotland: Participatory Peacebuilding at a Time of Increased Far-Right Christian NationalismIASH-National Museums Scotland FellowshipDr Sha HuangTexas Tech University1 Sep 2026 - 28 Feb 2027A Transferable Pilot Workflow for Community-Responsive Digital Cultural Heritage Using Hmong BatikIASH-SSPS Research FellowshipDr Mathieu Thierry NgossoUniversity of St Gallen1 May - 30 Jun 2027Firms, Climate Change, and Political ResponsibilityIASH-SSPS Research FellowshipDr Ferran Pérez MenaDurham University1 Sep 2026 - 30 Jun 2027Scottish Universities and the Development of Sino-British Transnational Elite Knowledge Networks from 1970s to 1990sIASH-SSPS Research FellowshipDr Suddhaseel SenIIT Bombay1 Jan - 30 April 2027Towards a Relational History of South Asian Environmentalism: Indo-British Interrelations, 1850-1950Medical Humanities FellowshipDr Chisomo KalingaUniversity of Edinburgh1 Sep 2026 - 31 Aug 2027Creating a Critical Disabilities and Medical Humanities HubNominated FellowshipDr Anne BonvanieSaxion University of Applied Sciences1 Jan - 30 Apr 2027Ethics in Interdisciplinary Research: developing a method for collective reflectionNominated FellowshipDr Nat CutterUniversity of Melbourne1 Oct - 21 Dec 2026Reading the Maghreb in Early Modern Britain: Marginalia and Networked Imaginaries, 1550-1750Nominated FellowshipProfessor David Embrick & Professor Johnny E. WilliamsUniversity of Connecticut & Trinity College, Hartford28 Nov - 8 Dec 2026White Sociology, Antiblack Racism, and Antiblack Male RacismNominated FellowshipProfessor Keya GhoshSwami Vivekananda University11 - 31 Oct 2026Community-Embedded Financial Cooperativism: Reconstructing SHG Institutions through Tagorean Rural Thought Nominated FellowshipDr Asma NaureenGovernment College University Faisalabad1 Oct - 31 Dec 2026Cinema and Visual Culture in Late Colonial Punjab, 1920-1950Nominated FellowshipDr Shabnur ParveenUniversidad Autónoma de Madrid1 Nov - 31 Dec 2026The Gendered Dimension of Racial Emotions: Muslim Women in India Nominated FellowshipProfessor the Hon Lady Sarah WolffeUniversity of Strathclyde8 Sept 2026 - 26 Mar 2027Gender in the Senior Judiciary of ScotlandPostdoctoral FellowshipDr Gemma CurtoUniversity of Liverpool1 Aug 2026 - 30 Apr 2027 + 1-31 July 2027Solar Storm Narratives: Space Weather in Literature and Popular Science from 1859 to PresentPostdoctoral FellowshipDr Yawen LiKings College London1 Jan - 30 Jun 2027Cultural Afterlives of Anticolonial Internationalism in Present-Day ChinaPostdoctoral FellowshipDr Fatima NaveedUniversity of Exeter1 Feb - 31 May 2027Censoring a Nation: Blasphemy, Obscenity, and Sedition in PakistanPostdoctoral FellowshipDr Thatshisiwe NdlovuUniversity of the Witwatersrand1 Sep 2026 - 30 Jun 2027Objects That Remember: Women’s Material Memories of Apartheid StrugglePublic Engagement FellowshipDr Kadija BouyzournUniversity of Sheffield21 Sep 2026 - 21 July 2027Voicing Care: How Migrant Women Share and Navigate Care through Oral and Relational PracticesPublic Engagement FellowshipDr Sara CanevaIndependent scholar1 Oct 2026 - 31 Jul 2027Music for Moving Together: Composing with Scottish Country DanceRACE.ED Stuart Hall Foundation FellowshipDr Rémy-Paulin TwahirwaAston University1 Mar - 31 Jul 2027What more is there to say about 'race'?: Black (Spatial) Politics, Black Life and the Anti-Migrant ConjunctureSabbatical FellowshipDr Ben CollierUniversity of Edinburgh1 Mar - 31 May 2027Never Mind The BollardsSabbatical FellowshipProfessor Alan GillisUniversity of Edinburgh1 Mar - 31 Jul 2027A poetry bookSabbatical FellowshipDr John HarriesUniversity of Edinburgh1 Sep 2026 - 31 Jul 2027Am,Ll.2 (a Beothuk harpoon head) – small things, story-making and the work of memorySabbatical FellowshipProfessor Lotte HoekUniversity of Edinburgh1 Aug - 31 Dec 2026Film Society: Cinematic Form and Social Change in BangladeshSabbatical FellowshipDr Aline NardoUniversity of Edinburgh1 May - 30 Sep 2027Reimagining Games to Teach AI Ethics to University StudentsSabbatical FellowshipDr Eugénia RodriguesUniversity of Edinburgh1 Aug - 31 Dec 2026Infrastructures of Knowledge-Making and Digital Participation in Biodiversity and Nature ConservationSabbatical FellowshipDr Elizabeth WilliamsUniversity of Edinburgh1 May - 31 Dec 2027Black Sisters on Whose Shoulders We StandVisiting Research FellowshipDr Lina FadelHeriot-Watt University1 Nov 2026 - 30 Apr 2027Staying, Speaking, Refusing: Ethics Beyond Compliance in Decolonial Research with Syrian Minority Women Who RemainVisiting Research FellowshipProfessor Chris HerbstArizona State University1 Jun - 31 Jul 2027Public Child Care Expansions, Parental Employment, and Household Well-Being: Evidence from ScotlandVisiting Research FellowshipProfessor Dr Sara NabilQueen's University1 Jan - 30 Jun 2027Expressive Embroidered Language: Exploring Braille as a Form of Expression Through DIY Maker CultureVisiting Research FellowshipProfessor Nicola RoyanUniversity of Nottingham1 Jan - 31 Mar 2027Scottish Responses to European Humanism, 1450-1550Visiting Research FellowshipProfessor Jenna SciutoMassachusetts College of Liberal Arts1 May - 30 Jun 2027Northern Spaces and the Edges of the SelfVisiting Research FellowshipDr Heather StanleyUniversity of Lethbridge1 Jun - 31 Jul 2027Maternal Darkness: Maternal Mental Illnesses in Canada, 1880-1960Visiting Research FellowshipDr Margarita VaysmanUniversity of Oxford1 Sep - 31 Nov 2026A Brave Life: Transgender and Queer Erasure in Russian CultureVisiting Research FellowshipDr Victoria Camille WestmontUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham1 Jan - 30 Apr 2027Reimagining the Industrial Past: Far-Right Political Groups and the Creation of Heritage NarrativesNOTE: Some dates may change.There are still some Fellowships to be announced - the British Council 90th Anniversary Research Fellowship is open for applications until 31 July, and we'll be advertising for our 2027 playwright-in-residence via the IASH/Traverse Creative Fellowship later this summer. This article was published on Thursday 25 June 2026
