Announcement of Scaliger Institute research fellowship winners
With support of several companies, including Brill Publishers, Elsevier and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guest per year to consult and examine material in the Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received a large number of applications this year from domestic and international scholars.
New Fellowship
A new Fellowship was launched in 2025: The Robert van Gulik Fellowship. This year we we hope to welcome the first Robert van Gulik Fellow.
And the winners are:
Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship
Fatkhu Rohmatin (National Library of The Republic of Indonesia): Women in the Indonesian-Malay World: A Study of 19th-Century Malay Legal Texts
Syahriza Alkohir Anggoro (Faculty of Law, Brawijaya University, Indonesia): Jurists in the Vortex of Revolution: Indonesian Legal Scholarship under Guided Democracy, 1959 – 1965
Jatmiko Wicaksono (STIKOM Yogyakarta, Indonesia): The History of Steam Trains in the Serayu Valley: Past, Present, and Future
The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship program, sponsored by the Lingling Wiyadharma Foundation, offers the opportunity to three students or scholars to spend up to three months conducting research using the Southeast Asian and particularly the Indonesian special collections at UBL.
Brill Fellowship
Liese Dictus (KU Leuven, Belgium): A Literary cave of Wonders: New Ancient Greek in the Bibliotheca Thysiana
Dries Nijs (KU Leuven, Belgium): Summa cum κλέει: The production and performance of New Ancient Greek poetry in thesis defenses at the early Leiden University.
Ellen Hausner (University of Oxford, United Kingdom): The Rise of the Character. An Abstract Method of Transmitting Meaning in Alchemical Texts, c. 1450-1700
Emma Gagnon (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA): Picturing Indonesia in the Dutch Republic
The long-running Brill Fellowship is sponsored by Leiden-based Brill publishing house and awards one or more fellowships yearly to researchers working on Brill publishing areas in the Humanities.
Juynboll Fellowship
Jan Thiele (Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo y Oriente Próximo (ILC), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid, Spanje): ‘Published by order of the Commander of the Faithful’: The emergence of book printing in Yemen
Leila Tabatabaei Yazdi (Seasonal lecturer at Ferdows Institute of Higher Education, Mashhad, Iran): A Study on Persian Lacquer Bindings in the Post-Safavid Era with a Focus on ‘Flower-and-Bird’ Iconography
The Juynboll Fellowship, sponsored by the eponymous Juynboll Foundation, annually supports up to two scholars studying Special Collections related to Islam in the Arabic world.
Drewes Fellowship
Geronimo Cristobal (Cornell University Verenigde Staten): Charting the Azimat. Manuscript Origins of Talismanic Art in Maritime Southeast Asia
The Drewes Fellowship, sponsored by the G.W.J. Drewes Fund, annually sponsors one or more fellowships to study texts on Islam and Indonesia, especially on Islamic mysticism.
Arminius Fellowship
Christopher Joby (School of History and Art History, University of East Anglia and Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, University of London, United Kingdom): Dutch Missionary Linguistics (1600-1800)
Jan Waszink (Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland): Continuation of the Wtenbogert correspondence project
The Arminius Fellowship is sponsored by the Vera Gottschalk-Frank Foundation and supports research into Special Collections relating to the Remonstrant movement.
Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship
Sam Kuivenhoven (Independent Scholar): Mapping the Weird and the Foreign: Popular Knowledge and the Visual Archive of Early Modern Japan in the Leiden Special Collections
The Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship, sponsored by the Isaac Alfred Ailion Foundation, sponsors scholarly research in the Leiden Special Collections regarding Japanese culture and language.
Elsevier Fellowship for Digital Scholarship
Edward Garrett (Independent Scholar and Self-Employed Sofware Developer): Transcribing and Widening Access to Lepcha Manuscripts in the Van Manen Collection.
The Elsevier Fellowship for Digital Scholarship, sponsored by the academic publisher Elsevier. It supports scholars who conduct scientific research based on the extensive Digital Collections of UBL.
Scaliger Institute
Founded by UBL and the Faculties of Arts, Theology and Philosophy (now the Faculty of Humanities) on the 425th anniversary of Leiden University in June 2000, the Scaliger Institute aims to stimulate and facilitate the use of the Special Collections of UBL in both teaching and research. The Scaliger Institute hosts several fellowship programmes for visiting scholars, some with a broad scope, like the Brill Fellowship, and others in specific fields of research, like the Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship and the Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship. Elsevier also offers a Fellowship for Digital Scholarship, specifically aimed at research in the extensive Leiden Digital Collections.
We thank all the sponsors of the fellowships in this round: Brill Publishers, the Juynboll Foundation, the G.W.J. Drewes Fund, the Lingling Wiyadharma Fund, the Isaac Alfred Ailion Foundation, the Vera Gottschalk-Frank Foundation and Elsevier.