British Academy announces 37 new Rising Star Engagement research awards

The British Academy has announced 37 new Rising Star Engagement awards for some of the most promising and talented academics in the UK, in a drive to boost engagement and collaboration within the humanities and social sciences.

British Academy Rising Star Engagement Awards (BARSEAs) are held for a 12-month period and provide funding of up to £15,000. They are designed to encourage wider engagement with the humanities and social sciences within and beyond academia through the organisation of events, training, and mentoring activities for a range of other early career researchers.

As part of this year’s programme, the award holders will be undertaking research in a wide range of different areas.

Dr Camilla Schofield (University of East Anglia) will treat the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powel’s Rivers of Blood speech as an opportunity to "drive the historical conversation forward on the shifting political meanings of race, inequality and difference." With a major public event in London, Rivers of Blood at 50 will provide a platform for a politically pluralist conversation among historians and historically-minded political scientists and sociologists about scholarly approaches to the study of multicultural Britain since 1968.

Dr Sarah Gilligan (Hartlepool College of Further Education) will create an international, interdisciplinary forum for established, early career and emerging humanities and social sciences academics to explore the interconnected roles that fashion and costume play in the construction, performance and transformation of identities.

Meanwhile, Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite (University of Birmingham) will be examining the history of charitable food provision in the USA and Canada in the context of the recent increase in foodbanks in the UK. This programme includes an interactive workshop which will bring together international early career (ECR) and senior researchers, charities, front-line workers, media, those experiencing food poverty and insecurity, and grassroots organisations. This two-day event will foster a new network of early-career scholars, while establishing new understandings of the relationship between the institutionalisation of charitable food aid within different contexts, to take the agenda forward.

Other projects include:

• Bridging Across Disciplines: Medieval Visions of Modern Science – Dr Maria Cesario, Queen's University Belfast


• The Challenges of Studying Political Campaigning in the Digital Realm: Implications and Strategies for Studying Facebook, Algorithms and the Online Sphere – Dr Katharine Dommett, University of Sheffield


• Political Epistemology: The Role of Truth in Politics – Dr Michael Hannon,
  School of Advanced Study, University of London


• Medieval Encounters between Islam and Christianity: Reassessing the Past and Reshaping the Present – Dr Robert Portass, University of Lincoln.

To be eligible for a BARSEA, candidates must be early career scholars within ten years of the award of their doctorate, and ordinarily live in the United Kingdom.

Candidates must also be able to demonstrate their academic credentials to be leaders in research through suitable marks of esteem awarded prior to the submission of the application. Applicants are required to have a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) champion their candidacy.